Sometimes, you have to be comfortable saying, “This working relationship isn’t working for me.

I almost walked away from a project recently.

Not because I couldn’t do the work.

Actually, I was doing the work. Designing screens, making changes, thinking through the UX, trying to understand what the client wanted.

But somewhere along the line, things started getting frustrating.

I’d design something based on the brief, send it over, and sometimes the response would be:

“This isn’t what I requested.”

Then I’d look back at the brief thinking, Wait… what did I miss? 😅

Sometimes the request would change. Sometimes I’d be asked to make something look like an existing design. And with every new round of feedback, I started realizing that the problem wasn’t necessarily my ability to design.

It was communication.

Expectations weren’t always clear. Feedback wasn’t always easy to translate into a design decision. And eventually, the project started taking more energy than it should.

That experience taught me something I probably should have learned earlier:

Being a good designer isn’t enough.

You have to know how to manage a client.

You have to ask better questions.

You have to document decisions.

You have to set boundaries.

And sometimes, you have to be comfortable saying, “This working relationship isn’t working for me.”

I’m still figuring out freelancing.

But every difficult project teaches me something the easy ones never could.

This one definitely did.