When I decided to be a full-time freelancer 6 months ago, I did not expected it would give me such a struggling situation like now.
My office shut down on late January due to some operational changing, and all of the employees scattered away and being forced to find a new job as fast as we could.
It was not a big company at all, we were only 13 people consists of 7 writers (full-time and freelance), 2 designers, 1 social media admin, and 3 board members. I, as the last Editor in Chief, tried my best to recommend my writer team to fill any media or journalism company vacancies. I tried to check on them everyday, waiting for all of them getting on board to their new job. I wanted everyone to be safe — financially and physically, since there were three people lived in our office base as well.
I myself, chose to be a freelancer then because I had some personal matter to take care. I was afraid I could not give my all to the new company if my head was still wandering. So, I was firm enough I would survive with my current writing skill and my new acquired design skill.
That was a month before the government and WHO released the official #StayatHome rule due to the pandemic. After two months, a big wave of layoff happening in every part of the country. Some of my ex co-workers experienced it again. It was quite hard for us to take double hits like that.
The last 4 months, I have been juggling to any project based writing job, illustration commissions, and helping my family small food business. In a time like this, of course it doesn’t really make the ends meet. People can’t spend that much money to hire a freelance writer anymore and they chose to deal with their low-quality SEO articles and captions; Thousands new food business came from anywhere, and the small kitchen got a rough time too because suddenly we have at least 200 competitors in the city; Nobody wanted a fancy illustration as their wall decor, let alone the illustration for children book project.
I tried to sell my arts and skills online, through Fiverr, Sribulancer, Redbubble… Anything I could think of, but the result is still none.
So, among the despair, I tried to step out and apply for office job again. And it’s even more brutal. There was this one remote job with a nice responsibility and I thought I could fit the criteria, but when I check who applied on that job, I got surprised by the number of 1,000 applicants.
It’s insane. Never have I ever found any Copywriter vacancy that was so wanted like that. Some of the applicants even worked as technicians with no writing experience before. That anomaly kinda made me curious, so I started to check the applicants number on every job I applied for. I had at least 100 rivals in every close range job.
Several days ago I also found the tweet from one of the largest hiring platform in Indonesia:
The translation was:
“Before pandemic, there could be more than 30,000 job vacancies.
During pandemic, there have been only around 15,000 job vacancies.Before pandemic, normally one vacancy could get 400–600 applicants.
During pandemic, one vacancy can get hit by 2,000–3,000 applicants.It’s not your fault.”
It’s horrible. On the street, there was large number of people who insisting that the disease is not real, that it is just a conspiracy. The worse part is that it is also rumored by some public figures with a big fan base who fanatically believed what they said.
The country is in a crisis that we never imagined before. The top politicians are still fighting for powers and being reluctant to care about what the people need; The medical team workers are dying; The students are in danger because their poor parents are getting exhausted of this new “double-job” as “teacher-working parent”; The factories aren’t running and everything are changed to be mask producing machine but no buyers because no one needs 50 different masks in the house…
There is a huge dilemma like nothing these three generations ever faced before: We want to flatten the curve by protecting everyone to stay at home and maintaining the social distance protocols, but at the same time the working class are also choking if it stays that way because the economy keeps on shrinking. We need jobs but the companies are also doing optimization. Jobless people are selling products but no one is buying.
Every morning I would wake up to nothing in my e-mail box, and spend my noon to sending another tens of application letters while waiting for a text of interview notification or any freelance project bid that is approved. I’m sure my other 150 rivals do that too.
It’s like a never ending vicious circle. Is it really no one’s fault?
