You are not being a lazy whiner! You can set boundaries!

That's not true. As a freelancer, you have the ability to only accept as much work as you want or need to do, if you're in the enviable position of too much work.

I'm afraid that if I turn down work they'll think I'm lazy, and I really don't want to risk losing this job. I feel like I need to just suck it up and deal with it, even if it means working until 11 at night and weekend and not having time to exercise or have a damn conversation with my husband.

Tep, after a while working those hours produce diminishing returns, you know? There does come a point where there's too much work for the available hours in the day, and it's okay to say that. It's better, actually, than taking on too much and then fucking up by not getting it done well or on time (see: me).

I feel like I need to just suck it up and deal with it, even if it means working until 11 at night and weekend and not having time to exercise or have a damn conversation with my husband.

I wouldn't say that was true even if you were an employee, and I think it's even less true as a contractor. (Speaking from a place where many of my colleagues have worked til 11 several nights over the past few weeks.)

Borrow some of my bad attitude, Steph. I've got a shitton going on at work and yet I'm sitting here unwashed, covered in cats at noon because I'll be DAMNED, they don't get my damned vacation hours. Even if I don't use them well.

We don't owe our jobs our mental health (says the rage bomb since July. Working on it...)

I feel like if I don't do it, they'll fire me and find someone who will. I don't really have any sense of proportion here.

Teppy, are these hours all the time or just for a short period? You can probably power through if it's just for a week but if they expect this amount of work all the time, that is untenable. NOBODY can work that way all the time. My DH is a freelancer and he has crazy 80-hour weeks sometimes, but he also has more normal weeks in between to recharge. It took him a while to learn to set boundaries, though. Some clients will just keep piling on more and more work and won't stop until you tell them to.

On a totally unrelated note, I have to share an online dating story my friend told me last night. She met up with a guy whose user name was ilovetofu (or similar). She asked him how long he had been a vegetarian, and he said he wasn't, but he was a VAGetarian. Yeah, his user name was actually ILoveToFU.

Oh NO, Jesse!

Teppy, are these hours all the time or just for a short period? You can probably power through if it's just for a week but if they expect this amount of work all the time, that is untenable.

All of last month and probably all of October. September was rough but I got through it because I thought it would just be the one month, but then my boss said that they're going to keep having me do the 2 jobs while the new person is transitioned into my job, which I understand and I want them to know I'm reliable and a team player so I do whatever they send me but it was literally more than twice as many hours in September than I've worked for them in any prior month. And I can't keep doing that but I feel like I can't refuse or they'll fire me. I don't really know what boundaries I can reasonably set and still stay employed. I mean, I get that I can set ANY boundary I want, but at the same time, they ALSO can say, well, if you won't do this, we need to fire you.

I just don't know what's reasonable. They're not unreasonable people, but doubling my hours is...I don't know if they're just not paying attention to the amount of work they're giving me or if it's just something I have to do or otherwise I get fired. And, you know, I need to be employed.