Projectless. It’s a real word now. As an IT project consultant, you sometimes experience periods without projects or job offers. Sometimes it is seasonal (Companies usually don’t start up a new project during Christmas and Summer Holiday season), and sometimes it’s simply because no one is hiring. It happens. In 2015 I went through several months of no-projects-for-me, and since I was quite new to the consultant business, I had to learn how to tackle those periods – the hard way. It’s my hope that others in this situation can use these experiences, for inspiration, or at least for knowing that you are not alone.

Stage 4. Despaired some more

I began to worry that I was heading towards stress… As in, medical stress, not the everyday “Oh my god I’m so stressed”. I had problems sleeping at night, I never made it to an interview even though several people confirmed that my CV was great. My colleagues were great at supporting me and told me that a new project would come any day now. Some days it helped, most days it didn’t. I felt horrible.. At his point even my friends had stopped joking about how wonderful it had to be to stay at home while getting paid. I realized I had to do something. I had to get away from the mindset of focusing on not having a project, and I needed to find something else. In the beginning I would have focused on test-related things, but at this point I decided that I needed to just focus on me and do something beneficiary for my health. Testing was put on a shelf for a little while.