# Fighting off the fear 

> Desperate attempts to not lose the joy 

**Published by:** [Mosaic of thoughts](https://paragraph.com/@cryptonao/)
**Published on:** 2026-04-03
**Categories:** philosophy, existential, freelancing
**URL:** https://paragraph.com/@cryptonao/fear

## Content

The last two months or so, I've struggled to do any personal writing. The reason is plain simple: a dark cloud of unknowing overshadowed my being and the stress thus created pushed me away from it... It started to appear a pointless exercise to write about random stuff on my mind, when I had so much bigger things to worry about: namely, financial instability. Turns out it's a b*tch - and there's very little one can do to control it. Freelancing for web3 projects has gotten even worse than it used to be. It's not news that paying freelancers is, by some, considered optional, particularly when your entity is in an offshore location, and freelancers have little legal recourse. I, too, have been there. Yet little did I know that the experience of chasing late payments for months on end is equally distressing. It doesn't help that AI has made finding paid writing work much harder. Not because the AI'd be writing equally compelling posts. It's simply used in callous attempts to force writers to lower their (salary) expectations. Or worse, to train custom AI models and be complicit in further hits to their livelihood. The bear market and lack of sensible treasury management might be to blame too, what do I know. It's not like contractors are owed any explanations, amirite? When it rains, it pours, and at some point, I had three clients I was chasing after to get paid. I am still waiting for one payment for work delivered from January to February. How nice is that? The uncertainty did little for my mental health. As the Germans say, a misfortune seldom arrives alone. With my cognitive resources depleted, an innocuous click on the wrong transaction link drained one of my wallets. In hindsight, I could have avoided this, but I am just human. I had so much shit on my mind, I simply had no space to be as distrusting as I should have been in that very moment. I was busy trying not to go insane, so I gave myself some grace for acting dumb in that one second. I admit, at first it was a shock. There went all the NFTs and crypto associated with my public ENS. RIP. May it make the attackers happy. Instead of writing a lengthy X article about my experience, I just let it be. I could have used the funds in that very moment as part of the proletariat. Alas, I was thrown back onto myself. An expensive lesson, another milestone in the "working full-time in crypto" journey. A realization that it'd all been built on sand, that onchain history of mine. May it lead to a good place one day. Being self-sovereign was never for me. A big part of my identity rests on what I am to others: a daughter, a big sister, a good friend, a nice neighbor. Materialistic goods or onchain achievements have contributed very little to the bundle of narratives I call myself. Yet, even with the most Zen Buddhist aspirations, in late-stage capitalism, not earning money is simply not an option. Unless you sit on a wealth of assets, where capital just magically accrues. I never had enough for yield farming to secure my livelihood, and with the entire fallout from the Reserve Labs exploit, I doubt I'd even put my life savings into DeFi. All this to say, work's been super annoying, the need to earn money is such a pain, and it's been stressing me out so much my eczema made a comeback (so the dermatologist said, who also recommended reducing stress - if only that was so easy). There is no escaping materialism. I still spent time writing, but it wasn't for me anymore. It was dreadful, it lacked meaning, and I'd lost sight of the spark that usually pushed me beyond the discomfort of the blank page, through the dizziness of conflicting ideas. I wrote perfunctorily, typed sentences about tokenization, XRP, and any other "high-ranking" keywords I couldn't care less for. I wrote cover letters for positions I didn't feel I actually wanted, but seemed to offer relief from the looming threat of not having any income, not for my own failings, but for others' unwillingness. Culpable once again of trusting people, where perhaps I shouldn't.List of jobs I've considered undertaker but for pets staff at a local food truck secretary for a bio-gas company customer service for a company managing claims with their vehicle fleets first aid course teacher optician hearing aid technician household aid train driver (at least can't take wrong turns there) receptionist at a concert hall Not a healthy place to be operating from. I think my soul was rescued by the fact that my social life has been great, and my perpetual singledom has come to an end. The casual coffee-and-cake dates with friends, the evenings on the sofa trying to learn medical Latin vocabulary with him, became my respite from the heaviness my existence had assumed. These moments were effortless. Porco Rosso I didn't need to be a certain accomplished someone; I could be me, and that was enough. Even things done to prepare for visits, such as cycling through a storm to the farther-away market to get the better chicken to cook for dinner, felt less effortful. Similarly, the herding of cats that it is at times to keep a local book club running doesn't feel nearly as effortful as chasing work. Visiting my parents, even when exhausted and unsure whether I can handle them saying: "I'm proud of how you manage your life..." When I feel all but as if I've got my shit together at all 90% of the time. The rest of the time, I'm just giving in to delusion. I try very hard to be a self-reliant, empowered woman; still, I can't help but occasionally dream of a provider husband. Not because I want to laze around or embrace my soft girl era. I'd just like to find out what I could create or dedicate myself to if I weren't forced to pour much of my energy into what often feels like meaningless work, to make money. Because somehow that's what we all ought to do with our lives. In the wise words of the great Cobie: It's all a great scam. Through it all, I wrote. I wrote all those words, forcing myself to continue in a desperate attempt to avoid the cliff. The work became heavy. Imbued with my livelihood attached to it. The worst place to be in for something I used to love. The fear created necessity. I had to try hard to coerce myself into continuing, publishing stuff. Quickly after it went live, I had already forgotten what it was about. By making it important and serious, she deprived it of its lightness and it became forced, laboured, overdone. Milan Kundera: The unbearable lightness of being Then I stumbled on a podcast where they discussed the point of trying hard, and asked why certain hard things don't feel effortful. Effortless effort was a phrase they used to describe hour-long meditation, hard workouts, or a week-long sugar fast. The great differentiator they identified was whether the effort sprang from a place of fear or love. Fear kills the lightness. The joy. Just what happened to me. I had stopped feeling a connection with the words I typed. I had let fear overtake. Sounds obvious. I had let fear take something from me, which had been a great source of... what Marx would deem expression of my species being. My creative force, an attempt to make sense of the experience of living through "unprecedented times" , a way to learn and pass on what I found, to feed my soul, and to hit back at the alienation. In a world where billionaires pride themselves on - and encourage others to not have - introspection, maybe putting my own thoughts into words is a small act of protest. The inner lives, they cannot take from you unless you offer it up. Don't. For my part, I decided I should reclaim writing for myself in my leisure time. Rediscover the joy I used to derive from language, to the point of picking a linguistics major when the management orientation would have been a much safer bet. I started picking my vocabulary cards up again, found a YouTube channel of a professor explaining formal English words, and more frequently caught myself when letting endless scrolling of job listings fuel the despair. The rational mind whispering: It's so over. This market is not for the faint-hearted. In those moments, I unplugged the router and went to lie outside in the grass looking at the sky. Observing the birds, trying to take in all the details to forget myself and my pathetic worries. (On the grand scheme of the universe) The birds do not care about financial instability It worked. It helped create in me the space I needed to sit down, take up a pen, and scribble what would turn into this essay into my notebook. To be engrossed in something outside ourselves is a powerful antidote for the rational mindAnnie Lamott: Bird by Bird A few months ago, when I started driving lessons, fear was always at the back of my mind. It didn't help that I'd done the math to know that even if I hit a kid at 30km/h, it could have deadly consequences. Speed was my biggest enemy until it wasn't, because I'd learned to just do it scared, as they say, and to tell myself I'd never be safer while driving than with a professional instructor in the passenger seat. I am still unsure what the point is of needing to drive 130km/h on the Autobahn, and the one time I rode at 200km/h just to get a sense for it, my mind went to the place of: if I sneeze, we're both dead. The fear is there, but it's probably a healthier amount now. Keeping me on my toes. The fear of hitting rock bottom financially (again) still persists. Yet, I also know that I've been in worse spots. And I'm learning to deal with it. There's a reason Maslow considered safety second-highest on the pyramid of needs. Perhaps, that safety is also psychological. I feel safe in my being, even if my professional future is all but. I tell myself, in the worst case, I'll just go back to working in retail or hospitality. At least there's no need to chase clients there to get paid. I don't want fear to take the things I love from me. Even if these words are just another scream into the void, for me, it wasn't pointless. "Without being melodramatic, I don't know how anyone can bear to live at the momentAdam Philips on the Philosophy for Our Times podcast.Wisdom from Tatami Galaxy Thanks for reading 💚 All the images I've found on Pinterest.

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