The summer break freelancers didn’t get
Everyone’s banging on about “back to school, back to business” energy, but most freelancers never left work in the first place. September isn’t a reset. It’s just more deadlines with worse weather.
Your feed is full of people treating September like a magical productivity reset. New stationery, gym memberships, colour-coded calendars.
Meanwhile, you’re wondering: when exactly was I supposed to stop working?
The myth of the summer break
Employees get out-of-office emails, school kids get six weeks off, parents get stressed.
Freelancers? We’re just grafting in slightly warmer weather.
Clients still want work done in August.
HMRC doesn’t pause deadlines.
Your invoices don’t pay themselves.
If you’re lucky, you moved your laptop to the garden and called it a holiday.
September isn’t special
This whole “back to business” narrative is designed for people who actually had a break. The ones who spent August on beaches, in Airbnbs, or carting kids to soft play while ignoring their inbox.
If you didn’t get that, September doesn’t feel like a reset as it feels like being told to start a marathon when you’re already at mile 15, running on fumes, and some influencer is shouting at you about “fresh energy” while you’re just trying not to collapse on the pavement.
And the worst part?
All those “back on track” pep talks clogging your feed are written by people who clearly weren’t on the track to begin with.
The quiet season that isn’t
August is often painted as “dead quiet” for business. For freelancers, it’s not quiet because it’s weird.
Half your clients vanish without warning.
The other half suddenly remember every job they need finished before their own holiday.
You’re either juggling last-minute chaos or staring at an empty inbox wondering if you’ve been ghosted for good.
Either way, it’s not restful. It’s not restorative. It’s just another month of holding your breath until September rolls in and everyone pretends they’ve been hustling non-stop.
What we actually need
Not a new planner.
Not a detox.
Not a smug carousel post about “reset routines”.
We need:
Clients who don’t vanish until October.
A reliable way to force ourselves to take a break (before we burn out).
Fewer emails with subject lines like “back to work deals 🚀”.
And maybe, just maybe, the permission to treat September as “business as usual” and not the starting gun for a race we never stopped running.
The real reset
If freelancers get a fresh start, it’s not in September. It’s that random Tuesday in November when you finally sack the nightmare client. Or the quiet Friday in May when you close your laptop at 3pm and actually mean it.
We don’t need a seasonal productivity gimmick.
We need actual time off, and the kind that doesn’t involve sneaky emails from the beach.
What I’ve been working on this week
A little peek behind the curtain:
Client catch-ups — half the world seems to come back online in September, so there’s been a lot of “hope you had a great summer, now here’s that urgent project” emails.
Chasing invoices — because apparently summer holidays include forgetting to pay freelancers.
Tidying systems — finally sorted some of the boring admin that piled up over August. Glamorous, I know.
Q4 planning — trying to pin clients down on what they actually want done before Christmas, instead of waiting for the inevitable December panic.
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That’s it from me this week - hope your September is off to a sane start. Hit reply and tell me: did you actually get a summer break, or was it just you, your laptop, and some melting ice cream?