u/UnspokenInk

Hey everyone! I'm a 20 year old student from India trying to start freelancing and eventually build a reliable income while I'm in college.

The weird part is that I have a bunch of skills, writing, scriptwriting, video editing, photography, filmmaking, psychology, some data analytics, etc.

but almost nothing to show for them professionally.

No clients. No portfolio. No certificates.

Just skills I've developed on my own.

I'm currently leaning toward writing/scriptwriting and short-form video editing, and I'm planning to spend the next few weeks building actual samples/spec work and then pitching to creators, businesses, agencies, etc.

I'd love to hear from people who actually started from zero:

How did you choose your first skill?

How did you build your first portfolio?

Where did your first client come from?

How long did it take?

What did you earn initially?

What mistakes did you make?

What would you do differently if you started today?

I'm not looking for a get rich quick scheme. I just want to understand the realistic path from:

“I have a skill” → “I can prove it” → “someone pays me for it.”

Especially interested in experiences from writers, editors, designers, content creators, or other creative freelancers.

Brutal honesty is welcome. 😭

We stare into the blinding white and tremble at the sheer

Audacity of nothingness, the deafening, blank fear.

That stroke of black is just the absolute bare minimum you need,

The lowest dose of ‘something’ just to watch the ‘nothing’ bleed.

Without the line, the emptiness is too immense to see,

So we draw a bleeding fracture and we call it history.

It is the only tether in a universe of frost,

A single thread of agony to prove we aren't lost.

We wake up to the bitter dregs, the heavy, scalding brew,

A cup of pitch black coffee just to drag the body through.

We light another cigarette and watch the embers burn,

Romanticizing the bare minimum, waiting for our turn.

We sell the marrow in our bones to buy a safer cage,

Defending all the hollow scraps we get for our wage.

We clock the hours, kill the years, we regulate the pain,

A synchronized machinery hallucinating rain.

What the hell is heaven but a coping mechanism bought

To pacify the animals who panic when they’re caught?

We build our towering steeples and we kneel upon the stone,

Terrified to recognize we suffer it alone.

We butcher in the name of ghosts, we spill the copper red,

To draw some artificial borders for the unremembered dead.

A million bodies piled high, a monument of rot,

To justify a patch of dirt the universe forgot.

Look at the fragile, sweaty mess of human love and lust,

Two breathing sacks of water grinding frantic into dust.

We call it something holy, but it’s chemical decay,

A shot of dopamine to keep the heavy dark at bay.

We strip the clothes, we chase the high, we swallow down the pill,

Because the silence of that white room is a thing designed to kill.

It isn't souls colliding, it is terrified biology,

A desperate, violent grasping for a false theology.

So bring the kaleidoscope of poison, bring the acid and the weed,

We have to drown the consciousness, we have to feed the need.

The mind is just an organ that is rotting in the skull,

And everything we synthesize is just to keep it dull.

We inject the sweet illusion straight into the open vein,

Because the sober eye can see the rusted, bloody chain.

We’re chasing down a neon ghost to paralyze the sight,

Terrified of waking in that endless, blinding white.

And what of 'mental health', that pretty, sanitized deceit?

A pharmaceutical demand to keep you on the street.

Sanity is nothing but a synchronized disease,

Where everyone agrees to hide the rot upon their knees.

The therapists are scribbling while the burning world revolves,

Offering a bandage as the human skin dissolves.

They lock away the prophets who have seen the empty room,

Because the truth of nothingness is an infectious, heavy doom.

Why do we grieve the fallen? Why the weeping at the grave?

When life is just a ransom that no intellect would save.

Is checking out a tragedy, or waking from the joke?

A quiet resignation to the rising of the smoke.

We shame the ones who fold their hands and willingly depart,

Because their quiet exit puts a mirror to our heart.

They saw the infinite white room, they saw the single thread,

And chose to be the background rather than the bleeding red.

Nobody asks the questions that are hiding in the dark.

Why light a dying ember when there’s nothing left to spark?

We are a parasite of consciousness, an accident of time,

Trying to convict the endless cosmos of a crime.

But the galaxy is silent, man. It doesn’t know your name.

The love, the hate, the suffering, it’s all a rigged-up game.

There is only that white canvas, and the brutal, naked proof:

The black line is a lie we tell to hide beneath the roof.

We stare into the blinding white and tremble at the sheer

Audacity of nothingness, the deafening, blank fear.

That stroke of black is just the absolute bare minimum you need,

The lowest dose of ‘something’ just to watch the ‘nothing’ bleed.

Without the line, the emptiness is too immense to see,

So we draw a bleeding fracture and we call it history.

It is the only tether in a universe of frost,

A single thread of agony to prove we aren't lost.

We wake up to the bitter dregs, the heavy, scalding brew,

A cup of pitch black coffee just to drag the body through.

We light another cigarette and watch the embers burn,

Romanticizing the bare minimum, waiting for our turn.

We sell the marrow in our bones to buy a safer cage,

Defending all the hollow scraps we get for our wage.

We clock the hours, kill the years, we regulate the pain,

A synchronized machinery hallucinating rain.

What the hell is heaven but a coping mechanism bought

To pacify the animals who panic when they’re caught?

We build our towering steeples and we kneel upon the stone,

Terrified to recognize we suffer it alone.

We butcher in the name of ghosts, we spill the copper red,

To draw some artificial borders for the unremembered dead.

A million bodies piled high, a monument of rot,

To justify a patch of dirt the universe forgot.

Look at the fragile, sweaty mess of human love and lust,

Two breathing sacks of water grinding frantic into dust.

We call it something holy, but it’s chemical decay,

A shot of dopamine to keep the heavy dark at bay.

We strip the clothes, we chase the high, we swallow down the pill,

Because the silence of that white room is a thing designed to kill.

It isn't souls colliding, it is terrified biology,

A desperate, violent grasping for a false theology.

So bring the kaleidoscope of poison, bring the acid and the weed,

We have to drown the consciousness, we have to feed the need.

The mind is just an organ that is rotting in the skull,

And everything we synthesize is just to keep it dull.

We inject the sweet illusion straight into the open vein,

Because the sober eye can see the rusted, bloody chain.

We’re chasing down a neon ghost to paralyze the sight,

Terrified of waking in that endless, blinding white.

And what of 'mental health', that pretty, sanitized deceit?

A pharmaceutical demand to keep you on the street.

Sanity is nothing but a synchronized disease,

Where everyone agrees to hide the rot upon their knees.

The therapists are scribbling while the burning world revolves,

Offering a bandage as the human skin dissolves.

They lock away the prophets who have seen the empty room,

Because the truth of nothingness is an infectious, heavy doom.

Why do we grieve the fallen? Why the weeping at the grave?

When life is just a ransom that no intellect would save.

Is checking out a tragedy, or waking from the joke?

A quiet resignation to the rising of the smoke.

We shame the ones who fold their hands and willingly depart,

Because their quiet exit puts a mirror to our heart.

They saw the infinite white room, they saw the single thread,

And chose to be the background rather than the bleeding red.

Nobody asks the questions that are hiding in the dark.

Why light a dying ember when there’s nothing left to spark?

We are a parasite of consciousness, an accident of time,

Trying to convict the endless cosmos of a crime.

But the galaxy is silent, man. It doesn’t know your name.

The love, the hate, the suffering, it’s all a rigged up game.

There is only that white canvas, and the brutal, naked proof:

The black line is a lie we tell to hide beneath the roof.

All love is nothing anyway,
Leaving no wreckage to blame, no thunderous explosion to mark the end,
I watched the warmth slowly drain from the short, cold text messages you’d send.
Nobody screamed or shattered mirrors; silence just covered the floor,
As we quietly starved a beautiful thing we forgot how to feed anymore.

All love is nothing anyway,
Losing its breath in the spaces between your kinder, emptier words,
I carried your distance beside all the bitter things I inferred.
Neither of us knew how to revive what was technically still breathing,
Just a slow ache in my chest while your shadow was already leaving.

All love is nothing anyway,
Little habits dissolved into weeks of quiet retreat,
And I became tired of carrying two hearts with only my feet.
No one can point to the exact night the feeling finally died,
I just remember waking up exhausted from standing beside it.

All love is nothing anyway,
Not because it isn’t real, but because it rarely stays.
Because even beautiful things can fade in ordinary ways.
And maybe that is the cruelest lesson time has ever shown,
That some people leave slowly long before they are gone.

All love is nothing anyway,
So let the world romanticize the ruins if they must.
I have spent enough nights trying to resurrect dust.
I will not call it hatred. I will not call it fate.
Just two people growing tired a little too late.

\- unspoken ink.

All love is nothing anyway,
Leaving no wreckage to blame, no thunderous explosion to mark the end,
I watched the warmth slowly drain from the short, cold text messages you’d send.
Nobody screamed or shattered mirrors; silence just covered the floor,
As we quietly starved a beautiful thing we forgot how to feed anymore.

All love is nothing anyway,
Losing its breath in the spaces between your kinder, emptier words,
I carried your distance beside all the bitter things I inferred.
Neither of us knew how to revive what was technically still breathing,
Just a slow ache in my chest while your shadow was already leaving.

All love is nothing anyway,
Little habits dissolved into weeks of quiet retreat,
And I became tired of carrying two hearts with only my feet.
No one can point to the exact night the feeling finally died,
I just remember waking up exhausted from standing beside it.

All love is nothing anyway,
Not because it isn’t real, but because it rarely stays.
Because even beautiful things can fade in ordinary ways.
And maybe that is the cruelest lesson time has ever shown,
That some people leave slowly long before they are gone.

All love is nothing anyway,
So let the world romanticize the ruins if they must.
I have spent enough nights trying to resurrect dust.
I will not call it hatred. I will not call it fate.
Just two people growing tired a little too late.

- unspoken ink.