How I made over 9000$ in Freelance while dealing with Mental Health Issues

Hello there,! I'm a Physics + CS undergrad at BITS Goa, a freelancer, a game developer, a web developer, and a co-lead in the TCG at Solana Sneks. I've been on an incredible journey of self-discovery, and today, I wanted to share a little bit about my experiences.

~Starting out
I remember when I first started at University. I had made a game gatdamn.io, a simple io game.

I wasn't doing anything much then but I did have a dead fiverr profile and 1 gig
I will make a game in GMS2. One day randomly, out of nowhere I got an order for 30$. This was huge for me back in the day and I was extremely excited. I did not expect Gamemaker to be big enough for a guy to contact me to help him.. So I did and it wasn't even a lot of work, but I made 30$💸

~Taking Freelance Seriously
During the summer of my first year, I decided to go all in to this freelance thing. I was a complete novice and I didn't even know web development, barely how to use nodejs. And guess what? It worked out. I feel like fiverr is a very friendly platform to start out. It takes time to grow and may not make money at first because you will have to show people some reviews but after a few orders people really start trusting you.🤝

I made a new gig for this no code tool called Thunkable and turns out many schools and colleges use it...So at first I was just doing their homework for money lol but it led to my biggest client.

It was a company from AU trying to run a SaaS and they used Thunkable for the frontend and AWS for the backend. This was also my first time getting familiar with building APIs and Lambda functions and I guess just overall using a cloud service. So I learned backend development properly as I kept working from them and mastered Firebase🔥. I love firebase, you can literally make anything with it.

I would put in a lot of hours every day for this client and started making a few hundred $ every week. I was extremely happy and kinda felt secure... I was paying my tuition and I bought a new laptop.💻

One day, I was approached by the good guys at Solana Sneks. I didn't realize it at the time, but this was going to be THE BEST THING THAT EVER HAPPENED TO ME✨. My experience with them has been nothing short of extraordinary. We started building (and still are) a trading card game in Gamemaker. I used my Firebase skills to build our whole application and we are in fact close to launch now, I mean like in July 2023.

~Depression
In my second year, I got to really dive deep into the enigmatic world of Physics. Quantum mechanics. Lagrangian mechanics. It was truly enlightening, to say the least.

But then a horrible depression hit me out of personal problems. I had to start taking antidepressants which caused horrible fatigue and demotivation, in the middle I stopped making money for a while. In his period of my life I was just too sick to feel anything. I stopped working out and meditating and for a while was very addicted to benadryl.

~Rocket Networking

As my experience in game development grew, I felt a calling to transform my freelancing ventures into something more structured. This led me to create Rocket Networking, a multiplayer game development framework designed to streamline the process of building games. I paused freelance to do this. I learned basic React.

This was my first time building a SaaS from scratch so I made a lot of mistakes. The worst one being doing a linear launch. One day to launch without building an audience. Looking back this is stupid because when I would tell people about the product they really liked using it. It was basically a managed VPS for you. I made and still do make some money off this but its not at all close to what I expected.

~Meltdown
Then it happened...all my problems blew up in my face and I had a huge episode followed by months of trauma-related stress. I was not freelancing. Rocket Networking mostly had free users. I was doing bad in University....everything got fucked up on Feb 14 2023. And no this isn't because of dating, the date is just coincidental.

It took me weeks to just get my emotions back and start feeling things.
I was in the OPD of a mental hospital and they said "take a lot of antidepressants" or "get admitted". And I couldnt be the psycho in a mental hospital... so I agreed to take the meds.

I was suicidal at this point and my family would constantly be toxic and trigger me. I was purely emotionless which was horrible.. its like being a zombie.
Its really sad seeing your mind fall apart when just a year back it could do complex physics faster than everyone. I wanted that back by any means. I started considering psychedelics. Just one hit to break me out of depression temporarily so I can at least think. Its easy getting MDMA in Goa. And I did. I have never tripped other than this one and it was extremely wierd... Like all the bad stuff in my life I could see and I had 2 options. Live with it or Maybe for once, lets let this go?

After a scary night I woke up. A bit calm and composed. I started feeling a few feelings .. This is what they call the afterglow effect. New Found wisdom. A little bit of comfort. I was really to start living again.

~Back to freelance
As I was recovering from that whole incident I realised that maybe I do need some security. Not a startup. I went back to fiverr and there were like 60 unread messages.

I started working on this again. "Yes, I'm so sorry for replying so late, If there is anything I can do please let me know". I got some really cool projects around this time.
I learned to control the HTML5 Canvas with Canvas API and a little bit of Pure H5 Game development. We were building an io game with Canvas API and Socket.io.🖼️
Another really cool project was from the University of Cincinnati where I built a Game, UI based Game Control system in *Google Cloud * for them. It was kind of related to biology🦇 and I really liked it.

Similarly, other projects came too and made a couple 1000$ after a huge period of not making money. One of the worst things I experienced a lot was sleepwalking so I bought this Health Ring💍 similar to oura but a lot cheaper which could monitor my sleep and tell me if I'm walking or whatever.

~Pausing freelance for another startup
Maybe this is me being stupid🤦‍♂️ but this summer I slowed down freelance again to focus on developing a project which could lead to a SaaS soon. Its helicity.ai , an AI based JS Game engine that you can use right in your browser. It feels like every project I did previously, I learned something from. And I'm using that somehow in helicity.

Canvas API - Core of the game engine
Google Cloud to handle our whole backend
Firebase(which is really like a cute nonscary version of GCLOUD) - Identity management, Database and a ton of Functions, APIs
React and Next.js - Building the Interface
Gamemaker - Learning what a game engine really needs
And many more...
Today even now, I am investing my time in creating Helicity.ai, Feel free to check it out!

Where am I headed next? Well, honestly, I'm not quite sure. But one thing I've learned from my journey is that the joy isn't just in the destination but in the journey itself. I believe it's this appreciation for the journey that keeps me motivated and excited for what's next. I still do have episodes of bad mood but I talked to my new doctor and because antidepressants are so ineffective for me, I'm going off them. Today is the first day I do.

Freelancing has been a stepping stone for me, allowing me to connect my love for physics with game development, and create a unique space for myself in this vast tech universe. It gave me the flexibility to explore different fields, learn on the go, and build something meaningful along the way. If you're considering a similar path, I hope my story serves as a beacon of possibility.

Here's to the winding road ahead!