I'll second this. In my case, fear of famine (which never actually happened) often led me to take on too much work to have a side project. Sometimes, I couldn

I'll second this. In my case, fear of famine (which never actually happened) often led me to take on too much work to have a side project. Sometimes, I couldn't do as good a job on concurrent projects, but was afraid to do things sequentially or turn down projects. FWIW, the business and sales skills tptacek talks about end up helping when the startup bug strikes again ... which it probably will. It's been said elsewhere, but one of the most important things is to hold firm on price, probably a much higher price than feels reasonable coming from startups. If you're not charging by the project, charge by day, not by hour. You have extra costs as a freelancer, and you provide extra value. So build that in.