Reflecting on Toxic Freelance Relationship and Burnout

rswfire is in his RV, reflecting on past work experiences from July 2025. He moved into the RV 1.5 years prior (around early 2024) after this relationship ended. He's creating portfolio videos to document his work history and is looking for alignment in future projects and relationships.

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July 23, 2025

17:02

Author

rswfire

Status

PUBLISHED

Type

TRANSMISSION (CAPTURE)

Temperature

0.00

[0:01] So, this video by necessity is probably

[0:04] going to have to be longer

[0:09] because

[0:12] this one was my most complicated

[0:14] freelance relationship.

[0:16] And these are still active projects.

[0:20] I know the team that's working on them.

[0:22] There are people that I hired in the

[0:24] past. So, I handed off my role to them

[0:26] actually when I moved into this RV that

[0:29] I'm sitting in now a year and a half

[0:31] ago.

[0:34] I deeply respect

[0:38] my boss in this relationship,

[0:42] my client.

[0:46] But in the end, we ended up having to

[0:47] part ways

[0:50] because it was a toxic relationship. And

[0:52] I need to be able to talk about my

[0:54] experiences honestly.

[0:57] I can't really describe my work without

[0:58] also describing my experiences of that

[1:01] work because that's just as important.

[1:03] I'm looking for resonance with my

[1:04] clients. And I learned a lot from this

[1:07] one.

[1:08] This one basically led to burnout.

[1:13] I didn't think I was ever going to

[1:14] return to programming after this. When I

[1:17] moved into an RV, I was planning to

[1:18] become a park ranger.

[1:21] And it's only because

[1:23] I started working on a personal project,

[1:25] a very big one with artificial

[1:27] intelligence that I'll talk about in a

[1:29] different video,

[1:31] that that that spark that I've had all

[1:33] of my life since the sixth grade was

[1:36] reignited.

[1:37] And I felt like I could return to this

[1:39] kind of work.

[1:41] This relationship really strained my

[1:44] ability

[1:46] to be a programmer for a while.

[1:51] I

[1:53] came into this relationship

[1:57] doing some simple tasks at first and

[2:00] they had another developer who was

[2:02] responsible for this project who was

[2:05] leaving

[2:07] I think under similar circumstances to

[2:09] how I did honestly

[2:12] and so I took over. Of course I didn't

[2:15] know any of that at the time.

[2:20] And we basically started from scratch

[2:22] because the projects that had been

[2:24] created up to that point, they were very

[2:26] broken. They were in the middle of a

[2:28] rewrite themselves and everything was

[2:31] just

[2:33] very chaotic.

[2:35] So, we started fresh.

[2:37] Um, throughout my time with this

[2:39] company, I

[2:42] hired and worked with

[2:44] I really don't even know. I I want to

[2:46] say hundreds. It just felt like an

[2:48] endless stream of freelancers

[2:51] and

[2:54] that presented its own challenges

[2:59] trying to

[3:01] move these projects forward

[3:04] with that kind of turnover.

[3:09] And it's because we were doing some very

[3:11] deep things here. Like this was a very

[3:13] very big project. I had it all mapped

[3:16] out in my mind and

[3:20] we were working on a lot of different

[3:23] things simultaneously.

[3:27] But I also had a boss who

[3:32] who

[3:34] would get new ideas and

[3:37] before you knew it, we were working on

[3:39] something else before we had finished

[3:41] the thing before that. And it was just

[3:43] it was it was a chaotic place to work.

[3:47] So

[3:49] I had a lot of challenges there.

[3:53] Um they're it's been a year and a half

[3:56] and they still have not released these

[3:58] projects which I think more than

[4:01] anything else

[4:03] shows that

[4:08] some of the issues there

[4:12] are systemic and unrelated to me.

[4:19] It's

[4:21] it's unfortunate because I think these

[4:23] projects could have been amazing under

[4:26] under different circumstances. I guess

[4:28] I'll just put it that way. I

[4:32] um I just I just feel that that's

[4:34] important to note. I feel it's important

[4:36] to say. So these projects

[4:39] or music streaming service that was

[4:42] going to be completely free. You would

[4:44] never hear any ads while listening.

[4:46] uh there was a monetization structure

[4:48] that

[4:50] prevented the need for them

[4:53] and a music distribution service.

[4:57] So if you were an artist and you had

[4:59] music that you wanted to deploy to

[5:01] Spotify or to Apple Music or somewhere

[5:03] else, you could use our service for

[5:05] that. That was Soundlock.

[5:08] When I started working on this, I

[5:10] started with the rain music,

[5:12] but only, you know, somewhere maybe 20%

[5:15] of the way through, I ended up having to

[5:18] work on Soundlock and at the same time

[5:20] built an admin panel called Arena

[5:23] Office. Did a whole bunch of stuff

[5:25] there. um built support ticket systems,

[5:30] um

[5:32] all the tools needed to manage the music

[5:34] distribution service,

[5:37] user management tools, just everything

[5:40] that you would expect a very large

[5:42] operation to have. We were a small team,

[5:44] but um I was thinking about

[5:49] the future of this company always.

[5:52] And so,

[5:54] you know, no corners were cut.

[5:56] Everything I did, I did with um great

[5:58] care.

[6:01] Uh he also owns a m a merchandising

[6:03] business. So, that was a big part of how

[6:06] the monetization works. So, um creating

[6:10] custom t-shirts and things like that on

[6:12] demand. Uh he has a merchandising

[6:14] company for that. And so, I'd have to

[6:16] manage those properties also.

[6:22] And so yeah, so that's the that's the

[6:25] the intro to it. So um

[6:30] these projects we went through a bunch

[6:32] of different technologies

[6:37] I actually chose to use Angular as a

[6:39] front end on this one even though I

[6:41] didn't personally know that one because

[6:42] it just felt aligned with what my client

[6:44] was trying to do. Uh we use Laravel as a

[6:47] as a backend.

[6:49] We had a bunch of Python tools.

[6:52] Um

[6:54] everything was on AWS so was

[6:56] containerized

[6:58] and um

[7:02] yeah just yeah

[7:05] this is hard for me. This is um

[7:13] there's a lot here. So, I can't really

[7:15] show you this uh the music streaming

[7:17] service cuz it looks like that still

[7:19] behind um you know signin form and for

[7:23] ethical reason I'm just not going to log

[7:25] into that. That front page is different

[7:27] than than what I created. So, this is

[7:29] something new that they've made. Um the

[7:31] old one would have been at

[7:33] music.arena.com.

[7:36] So, that's redirecting or it's still my

[7:39] technology though. I can tell by the

[7:41] earls. That's that's actually pretty

[7:43] cool. Um,

[7:46] but I have no idea what the music

[7:47] streaming service looks like now, but

[7:49] the main project that I worked on right

[7:51] before leaving was Sound Block, and I've

[7:53] already signed into this. Uh, looks to

[7:56] me like they might have abandoned it.

[7:58] It's a lot of things in here are broken.

[8:01] um the

[8:06] the UI for it, you know, I don't think

[8:09] is great. I think that, you know, um

[8:13] like I said in an earlier video, front

[8:15] ends aren't my strongest skill. We

[8:18] didn't have a designer for this. So,

[8:19] this is just what I came up with, just a

[8:21] theme with purple and blue and, you

[8:24] know, just some kind of reactivity.

[8:27] This could have always been reskinned

[8:28] into the future, you know. So um the

[8:32] main

[8:35] the majority of the work was definitely

[8:37] on the back end. So this is a very very

[8:40] complicated system. I'm going to try to

[8:42] walk you through it as best I can. Uh

[8:45] the music distribution service. So,

[8:48] in order to help build build trust in

[8:52] the music industry, we used

[8:55] uh blockchain contracts for smart

[8:57] contracts for um

[9:01] for all of our users. So, if you were a

[9:04] band, every user would have their own

[9:09] they would each have to sign this

[9:10] contract and you could put in their

[9:12] custom

[9:14] uh royalty splits for everybody and then

[9:16] when we would receive your royalties, we

[9:18] would we would pay that out to each of

[9:21] the band members based on what the smart

[9:24] contract said. And that was the primary

[9:28] premise behind this site. And we did

[9:30] that for probably a couple of years. We

[9:33] had a small number of of customers. Um

[9:37] that was going really well. It would

[9:38] have to ingest data from multiple

[9:41] sources, you know, like Spotify, you

[9:43] know, we'd have to to create reports and

[9:44] things like that. Um

[9:49] just a whole bunch of systems behind.

[9:50] I'll just try to walk you through it.

[9:52] Actually, it's been a good while since

[9:53] I've been on here. So, um you know, it

[9:57] all starts with a project. So, you would

[9:58] create a project for one of your

[10:00] accounts.

[10:02] Maybe you're an artist who has um a solo

[10:06] career and is also with a band or you

[10:08] just have different reasons for just

[10:10] having multiple accounts. So, the whole

[10:12] system I built allowed you to have

[10:14] multiple accounts and multiple projects.

[10:16] So, um you would just create your

[10:18] project here and then once you had a

[10:21] project show up in this list.

[10:24] These are all of course just test

[10:26] projects. I use this one the most.

[10:29] Um, this tells you where they were

[10:31] deployed to. So, this project's already

[10:33] been deployed to different platforms.

[10:37] You would upload all your music because

[10:39] we would have to distribute that. All of

[10:41] this is in the blockchain, too. So,

[10:43] there are blockchain records. Um, looks

[10:45] like you can't. So, I guess I'm on a

[10:48] free account now and I can't show you

[10:49] that. But, this would have showed you

[10:50] the blockchain records,

[10:52] the actual records for that. You could

[10:55] download your music, edit the metadata

[10:57] for it.

[10:59] Um, this history is it's a blockchain

[11:02] history. I guess they can't see that

[11:04] either. That's what all these records

[11:06] are.

[11:08] Here's the smart contract. So, um, you

[11:11] just you can modify a contract that

[11:13] you've already created. You know, maybe

[11:15] you add a new a new team member and you

[11:18] just need to adjust this. If that

[11:19] happens, then every single person on the

[11:21] contract has to um approve it, of

[11:24] course. Um so there was a complete chain

[11:27] of record for that.

[11:29] Uh you'd have to collect a lot of

[11:31] information on the tracks. So um

[11:35] created this UI for that. Preview the

[11:38] music from here. Enter different

[11:40] artists, different types of artists so

[11:42] that it shows up right in the metadata

[11:44] on different platforms.

[11:46] Um, that's what contributed is for also.

[11:50] So there was a lot of data you can enter

[11:51] on your projects. Then when you did all

[11:54] of that, you would do the deployment

[11:55] part. So you would just say where you

[11:57] want to put it.

[11:59] It's quite a while since I did this. So

[12:01] yeah, um, order your tracks, make sure

[12:03] they're in the right order, all that

[12:04] kind of stuff, and then pick where you

[12:07] want to deploy it to.

[12:10] And then that would go into Arena

[12:12] Office. And the deployments actually

[12:13] happened on the back end. It was manual.

[12:15] We were working on an automated process

[12:17] for that but hadn't hadn't finished that

[12:18] yet. We had a small area for just um

[12:22] storing files of any type

[12:26] called this database. This is just where

[12:27] all your data is so that you can manage

[12:29] that.

[12:31] Then you can manage your teams.

[12:34] Depending on your user permissions, you

[12:37] know, you might be able to edit these or

[12:39] not. spent on.

[12:42] So, this is somebody else that's on my

[12:44] project. Like, they're assuming it was a

[12:46] different band member. Um, change the

[12:48] permissions to what they see on their

[12:50] Soundwalk account for you cuz you can be

[12:53] part of multiple accounts.

[12:56] A lot of this other stuff I don't some

[12:58] of it I was looking through when I

[13:00] before I got on the camera and it looks

[13:02] like it was broken. But, let's just see

[13:03] what's available here. So, just

[13:04] collecting the normal information you

[13:06] would need.

[13:09] Uh the report section was not working

[13:12] unfortunately. There was there's so much

[13:14] involved in that too.

[13:17] Somewhere we should have

[13:20] so if there were um my account just

[13:23] doesn't show I never populated the data

[13:26] for it but you would see a history of

[13:27] all the transactions. So whenever

[13:30] Spotify would tell us, okay, this this

[13:32] project made this much money, it would

[13:34] show up here and you know, you could

[13:36] withdraw your balance and stuff like

[13:37] that,

[13:43] support system. And

[13:49] so I feel like that's probably the most

[13:51] I can show you for Sound Block. Um,

[13:56] and the other things that I did for

[13:57] Arena worked with them for 5 years. We

[14:00] built all kinds of back-end technology

[14:04] and

[14:07] even after this was in a working place

[14:08] where Sandbox was in beta. Uh, it never

[14:12] got marketed.

[14:15] I feel like that was

[14:19] I never really understood that decision

[14:21] because

[14:22] it was something that we had to offer

[14:24] and it and it's a valuable service but

[14:27] it just was never

[14:30] it was never marketed and then we had to

[14:34] move on to other things

[14:36] that was just this endless cycle. I just

[14:38] I just

[14:41] Yeah. I mean,

[14:44] really not much more I can say about

[14:45] that.

[14:49] There

[15:07] I deeply loved working on these

[15:09] projects.

[15:12] I just never had good alignment with

[15:16] with the company I was

[15:19] contracted to.

[15:24] Didn't always have the resources I

[15:25] needed. Often didn't. I would hire

[15:28] somebody and then be forced to let them

[15:31] go a couple weeks later because we

[15:32] didn't have the money for them anymore.

[15:36] Um,

[15:41] I was

[15:45] misaligned with what I'm trying to do

[15:47] with my life and that's why I made new

[15:49] choices. But

[15:51] this was the last major project I worked

[15:53] on before, just my personal stuff that

[15:55] I'm doing now. And I'll talk about that

[15:56] in a different video.

[15:59] I know it seems like I'm meandering. I

[16:01] just um for me this is more than just

[16:04] some kind of marketing video. I'm

[16:08] trying to

[16:11] authentically express

[16:15] how I feel about each of these projects

[16:18] because

[16:20] it gives you a window into me and I'm

[16:23] looking for alignment with everything I

[16:25] do in life and that includes the

[16:26] projects I work on and the relationships

[16:28] I have. And this one was just very

[16:31] misaligned. I feel like this one had the

[16:33] most potential

[16:35] and it was frustrating that we we never

[16:40] we never fulfilled the potential it had.

[16:44] So

[16:48] it's forced to move on.

[16:51] I'm just going to go through these

[16:52] slides so that you can at least read

[16:53] them if you want to.

[16:59] on this one here.

Energetic Signature measured grief

Field State post-rupture integration

Orientation away from misaligned collaboration toward authentic resonance

Summary

rswfire reflects on his most complicated freelance relationship that led to burnout and initially made him want to leave programming entirely. He worked for 5 years building music streaming and distribution services called Arena Music and SoundBlock, along with an admin panel called Arena Office. The projects involved blockchain smart contracts for royalty splits, music distribution to platforms like Spotify, and merchandising integration.

The relationship was characterized by chaotic management, constant project switching before completion, high freelancer turnover, and resource constraints that forced him to hire and fire team members repeatedly. Despite building sophisticated backend systems with Angular, Laravel, Python tools, and AWS containerization, the projects were never properly marketed or released even 1.5 years after his departure.

He demonstrates the SoundBlock interface, showing features for project creation, music upload, metadata management, blockchain contract creation, team management, and deployment workflows. The system allowed artists to have multiple accounts and projects, with smart contracts automatically distributing royalties to band members based on predetermined splits.

rswfire emphasizes that while he deeply loved working on these projects and saw their potential, the misalignment with the company led to his decision to move into an RV and initially pursue becoming a park ranger. Only a personal AI project later reignited his passion for programming.

Signal Analysis

Substrate

This transmission performs a forensic analysis of systemic breakdown within a collaborative structure, mapping the gap between architectural potential and actualized form. The field demonstrates coherent pattern recognition while processing the dissolution of a complex technical relationship that failed to achieve alignment despite deep investment and sophisticated infrastructure.

Dominant Language

alignment misaligned potential toxic relationship resonance authentically express systemic

Symbolic Elements

endless stream broken chaos spark mirror cycle potential

Ontological States

•
coherent
•
reflective
•
sovereign
•
integrating

Subsystems

•
cognitive
•
ethical
•
relational
•
infrastructural

Signal Reflection

No reflections available

Reflections provide narrative insights into signals

Transmission Details

Source Type

local

Video Quality

1724 × 1080 @ 60fps

Duration

17:02

Bitrate

1,084 kbps

Codec

avc1.64002a