In rapid time, my income went from “not rich, but at least I’m making ends meet!” to “if nothing changes, I’ll be homeless again in a year from now”. Thanks, AI.
Yeah. I’m one of those people who can say: I lost my job to AI. Fast forward a couple of months, the situation unfortunately became that dire. I’m going to have to seriously get my act together and start finding more ways to make money really quickly. Luckily, I’m not out of ideas. I’m also not out of energy to work hard. Whenever you notice that I’m not posting as much on my blog, I’m actually still working on a bunch of things behind the scenes.
Some things can’t really combined with inspiremari.nl, though. For example, for the longest time, I never talked about being a freelance translator because it simply had nothing to do with the subjects on my website. I’ve been self-studying several languages, including of course my own native language Dutch in order to become better at it, as well as English, and often contemplated about writing about that on my blog, but never really found that language learning was a subject that ‘matched’ with inspiremari.nl. Except for Japanese of course, a language I’ve been trying to learn for the longest time now and still need more practice with. Now, I may talk about my journey of learning Bulgarian every now and then, since I moved here to actually immerse myself (it helps!), but probably not so much. The main subjects of my personal blog will still be cats, kawaii, nostalgia and especially art talk and resources.
And, like this post, I’ll talk a little bit about my personal life every now and then. InspireMari.nl is a personal blog, after all. And even though I find it hard to talk about these negative things, I do think it adds value to my blog as whole. It allows my readers to get to know me a little bit better.
How Did AI Do This?
Well, AI didn’t do anything except be available for free to everyone and their grandmother. That’s cool, but a lot of clients and businesses have decided they don’t need me anymore. So, I’m sitting on two decades of work experience and language skills (plus, I lost my income while in the middle of studying another language for my now dying translation career, yay) and I’m having trouble getting anyone to pay for my expertise.
As AI got better at translating – definitely not perfect, mind you – more and more of my clients decided to either skip using my services altogether, or only use me for proofreading services. Proofreading services are typically cheaper, so that’s why. And yes, I raised my rate for proofreading AI-translated and AI-generated content, but nobody wants to pay extra. :)
Besides AI, there is also the problem of people being okay with doing the same work for less, after all. Some people will lower their rates just to still get work. I understand that. Yes, I’ve done it too. No, it didn’t help.
Why I Decided to Share this
I want to be real. In a world – especially an online world – where everything seems to increasingly become ‘perfect’ and ‘curated’, I want to be someone who shares an ‘average’ life. Well, average may not be the right word, but certainly not everyone is living the dream life that we see from not only celebrities, but also ‘influencers’ and ‘normal people’ with a social media presence.
I’ve never had an interest in making my life seem fancier than it is. Having said that, I’m not trying to make it seem worse than it is, either. I’m currently struggling financially, but I’m not hopeless. And I want to share my hope, my resilience with others who are in the same or a similar boat as myself.
Thank You For Staying With Me!
I truly appreciate every single one of you who reads my blogs – even if you just skim over them. I appreciate you for sticking around and coming back.
I can’t promise myself that things will get better, but I do still have hope. It would be life-changing if any of my projects turn out to become profitable and I’m happy to have you along for the ride, no matter where the ride will take me.
