Burnt out and constantly anxious
I started my own business when I was 20/21. (I am a tattoo artist)
3 years ago I teamed up with another artist and we became friends because we spent a lot of time together, they are a year younger than me.
It’s been great for the longest time, seriously, it’s been nice to have someone in the exact same situation working next to me. But this year I started to notice / realise some things and I can’t look past them.
To start somewhere: I always had to work for my business, I didn’t get any direct help from family or whatever and it never really occurred to me that this could be different for other people. I have the privilege to still live with my parents because I also study next to working, so I wouldn’t be able to afford to pay rent for the studio AND an apartment. So I can never save up much because business for tattoo artists is hard right now, it’s going slow, people have less and less money to spend on luxury like tatts (which is fair in this economy)
So, I started to realise that my friend and colleague is getting everything paid. If they don’t have the rent for the studio that month, their parents will pay it. Holidays in Greece? Parents pay. Oh going somewhere, parents drive them to a different country and pay for whatever they are doing there.
Like they aren’t taking the same risk as me working this job.
It shouldn’t matter to me how the rent gets paid but I feel betrayed in a way.
There also were many tini tiny issues again and again, with each one I felt like, oh this is so small I can’t say anything and so on. Turns out if you ignore a drop for 100 times you still end up with a puddle… or a lake. It’s my own fault for not speaking up, but I seriously can’t help it. I can’t bring myself to talk about this. Even with the small issues my heart starts racing, my ears are ringing and I feel like I can’t breathe.
Long story short;
I am at the point where I don’t want to work with them anymore, which also means I‘d have to give up the studio. It also means I do have to talk about it, because it’s literally destroying me, but I don’t want to hurt them. They are a good friend after all. It’s been this bad mentally for the last 3 months and my life is severely affected by it. I feel burnt out, stressed and I can’t manage to be productive/ creative (which is kinda my job)
I know the only way is to talk about it, I’m just not there yet I think
Posted Jul 30, 2026, 2:17 PM UTC · locked