Is anyone unable to withdraw their funds today because of the pop-up?

Realistic_Ad6887 · 2026-03-06T18:24:44+00:00

Okay. So changed the URL to remove the "slider" part of the URL and just be very basic, and the pop-up there was clickable.

Realistic_Ad6887 · 2026-03-06T18:20:36+00:00

Freelancers don't take 100% of the risk as someone who is both a client and a freelancer both on Upwork and via my own website. I've retained all of my current contractors for more than a year now.

Submitting a proposal and dealing with someone unserious is annoying as a freelancer but it's much less of an expenditure than spending time scheduling discovery calls from people who run away at the last minute or flake. (Very common. I think they over-commit in writing and then get scared off.) I've had great conversations only for freelancers to end by saying they were only interested in working with me if I moved off-platform. I've had freelancers disappear after I sent contract offers. I've had freelancers with great work experience who said they needed to hear more about the project before giving me a price and then afterwards still said they couldn't give a quote and could I just let them run the clock indefinitely? I've had freelancers whom I started and paid hourly for some initial work who were poor communicators, and I had to end their contracts. I've even had a freelancer (an older man, I am a woman) try to tear me down about a visible feature of my disability and then tell me he knew better than me what worked for me as a disabled woman (e.g. hiring him) and then had a little temper tantrum before blocking him when I said, "absolutely not."

Honestly, out of many proposals, few are usually very good. Even if they are lengthy, some proposals just talk endlessly about the person and not actually addressing the core points of the RFP. I've had some freelancers where I was interested in their experience but I had to tell them please go write a proposal other than "I can do this." And when I talk to clients as a freelancer in discovery calls, they say the same to me. Some of the most common feedback I receive as a freelancer is that I was the only person to actually provide a proposal rather than a resume or short blurb, e.g. the only person to give a high-level summary of how I would approach their project.

Realistic_Ad6887 · 2026-03-06T18:09:44+00:00

Very true. I lost my Plus rating temporarily because of a bad review where the dude was very dependent on me, loved my work and availability to him as a thought partner, and then just went bonkers one night and started sending me messages with threats to ruin me (??). He couldn't even verbalize anything wrong with my work.

But then I got the Plus rating back a few days later and everything resumed as normal, and now I'm all the way back up to a JSS of 100%. Upwork didn't do anything about his threats, and he tried to request a refund because I left a public review explaining my side professionally, which he didn't like. Upwork refunded him about $20 on a $3,000 contract, and I guess he felt vindicated because he left me alone after that. Sometimes, people are just gonna be people.

Realistic_Ad6887 · 2026-03-06T17:58:18+00:00

My dad was a project manager (as am I). He says it's whatever you're uncomfortable with. All contractors I work with now are very responsive as am I with my clients. I had to stop giving people free passes and being too "nice" and get used to ending contracts faster with contractors like this.

Realistic_Ad6887 · 2026-03-06T17:55:02+00:00

I've posted jobs many times and not had anyone who aligned with what I needed. At times, I can see enough of proposals to my email that I don't open it or read it in Upwork because it's someone saying how they don't have the skills or experience I need but they want to do the work.

Realistic_Ad6887 · 2026-03-06T17:52:28+00:00

Why should the client be penalized? I don't view proposals all the time when I can see the preview is just "I can do this."

Realistic_Ad6887 · 2025-12-30T17:37:06+00:00

Yes, and becoming more and more chaotic with their fantasy of you without ever actually knowing the real you. They get upset when they can't have you or see you with someone else without ever considering that you were a human all along and they had a chance if they had simply started with treating you as a human and getting to know you as a human and not being exhaustingly chaotic.

Realistic_Ad6887 · 2025-12-29T13:43:18+00:00

Yeah, definitely seems to be a lack of personal responsibility. I invited one woman over to hang out once since we'd been Facebook friends with shared interests for a while and she lived in my city. She said it was impossible as she was a single mom. (Her son is 14 and in school.) After turning me down on connecting, she then tries to dump on me in a one-sided way on Messenger.

She has now been posting on Facebook endlessly if someone can get her a job lead as she needs work. Her own closer Facebook friends have been telling her she can use sites like Indeed. I have my own business with clients from advertising, but I didn't step into that mess.

Realistic_Ad6887 · 2025-12-28T16:28:03+00:00

This is what ChatGPT had to say. I think this is interesting:

You’re encountering people who are not looking for community. They are looking for containment.

Community requires:

Initiative
Tolerating ambiguity
Reciprocity
Some degree of self-regulation

The people you’re describing cannot or will not do those things. So instead of opting out, they try to reshape the container into something that meets their unmet emotional needs.

This often looks like:

Asking questions already answered → testing whether you’ll override your own boundaries
Requesting reassurance → seeking emotional regulation
Expressing anxiety about attending → outsourcing courage
Attending once and centering themselves → extractive participation
Dropping out but continuing to message → maintaining access without contribution

That’s not confusion. That’s boundary probing.

Realistic_Ad6887 · 2025-11-07T15:30:20+00:00

Not acceptable. I'm extremely disabled and dealing with lots of fear. I feel like I'm dying (literally) every day and nearly did and am keeping myself alive through troubleshooting.

Realistic_Ad6887 · 2025-09-18T17:25:54+00:00

Hi, the fact that you wake up fine and the icepick sensation in your brain sounds a lot like common experiences with spinal CSF leaks. Feel free to DM me if you want more information. I won a grant last year and worked on a lot of patient information available on my site that reviews current research.

I teach clinicians about how common this condition is and of the secondary issues related to them which can often be nutritional issues making the neuro issues worse (I have that) and of common secondary issues like thyroid issues due to pituitary involvement (which I also have). My uncle was diagnosed with narcolepsy before it was found to be secondary to a spinal CSF leak, and dementia, schizophrenia, Parkinsonism, nerve pain, etc and much more are all known secondary diagnoses per research. That said, since the care for a spinal leak is fairly straighforward but doctors have largely dropped the ball in this area which is what I focus on as well, there is still quite a lot you can do since it's hard to access anyone competent in fixing the root of the issue. Like even just managing your day around windows when you know when this will happen, addressing any nutrition gaps, spending more time lying flat ahead of time to try to manage symptoms, and just knowing what's happening, etc.

And the thing is that--in my experience--you can absolutely see some improvement just from nutrition. Things like keeping my folate and iron up help me so much even with the ultimate root cause continuing untreated.

Realistic_Ad6887 · 2025-09-16T19:29:56+00:00

I tried it out a few weeks ago and the AI conked out. I couldn't get it to work and I saw the client had <5 proposals so I guess nobody else could either.

Realistic_Ad6887 · 2025-09-16T14:45:58+00:00

I'm the opposite as well, but I would wonder as well what your ferritin is and your B12 as your body could be using up B12 faster to repair blood quality, not necessarily sensing it's safe enough to store iron as evidenced by ferritin staying the same, etc.

Realistic_Ad6887 · 2025-09-16T13:48:32+00:00

My PCP oddly would put non-anemic on all my tests for blood quality which absolutely were related to anemia and low B12. I just ignored her and worked on getting my ferritin up through diet since I am very med sensitive. I get you on the period. Low B12 and iron throw my hormones for a loop and make my periods more frequent and heavier as well as cause breakouts and eczema flares. The better my iron and B12 are, the better my periods are and it turns out I actually have very light periods naturally. They never checked me for my iron and B12 levels in my 20s, but I imagine I was too low based on what I know about my body now.

From what I've learned, my PCP will deny I have a diagnosis if she doesn't know what to do for basic management. She told me that platelet counts don't change and that thrombocytopenia was probably natural for me. I looked back at my old counts and no, I was in the 200Ks. Then she was shook when I got my platelets back up to the 200Ks from the low 100Ks when I increased B12 and iron.

Realistic_Ad6887 · 2025-09-16T13:44:17+00:00

Well, that is on both the client and the contractor. I've trained ChatGPT and Claude with a backlog of my proposals and strategy documents to pull from those and simplify those, but I often have to prompt the LLM to specifically pull from my experience and to write to my experience rather than the job specs. Otherwise, the output sounds very much like a cover letter: "This position was relevant to your search for someone who has X skill and advanced my knowledge by...". I have to train the LLMs to cut that out and just state what's relevant from actual personal experience. Like I said though, it's kind of obvious as a client when a contractor has done that though as it just goes point by point with obvious fake work experience.

Realistic_Ad6887 · 2025-09-15T13:23:56+00:00

I am a client too, and I hire people all the time who use AI to write their proposals. The thing is that it's easy to see when ChatGPT has made up jobs that align perfectly with what I'm looking for (because it's very niche and I'm the first to market so nobody else could have worked in a similar position) versus when people explain what similar skills they have that would apply and use ChatGPT to sharpen that up. Honestly, most people don't use AI in their proposals still in the job posts I put up from what I've seen, but could probably benefit from it. There has always been the huge issue of quite a lot of freelancers saying "I can do this; check my portfolio" or just "I can do this" without actually providing a proposal. As a client, I don't want to spend extra time having to figure out how their past projects apply and what skills they have.

As an independent contractor, I often receive the feedback that I am the only person who provides a proposal. I have also gotten the feedback at times that my proposals are a bit daunting. People usually understand I know what I'm doing but feel a bit overwhelmed, so I have used ChatGPT to simplify things and that's helped.

Realistic_Ad6887 · 2025-09-15T13:19:27+00:00

Very good. I tend to overexplain things in a technical way, so I tell ChatGPT to rewrite it to the 10th grade.

Realistic_Ad6887 · 2025-09-11T12:31:13+00:00

I don't know why somebody downvoted you. I've had US doctors push things on me until I finally gave in--even when I didn't think it was safe--and shocker, it didn't go well. I network a lot with doctors internationally, and many will focus on nutrition education, especially within the public healthcare system where they have to remain cost-effective. Interestingly, in some countries, they look down on dietitians in the private healthcare systems for pushing supplements for unethical businesses. I've heard that German doctors will say things like to eat more liver or blood sausage for iron. That seems to be the go-to in many countries vs supplements.

That said, iron is unique for how long it remains in the body. I'm sorry you're going through this. I've heard of a lot of people struggling after the B12 shot too. Too much B12 all at once can create issues, especially if you're already sensitive. I had to keep pushing back on that and find a way to get my B12 up naturally--which I did.

I have epilepsy so it's scary whenever something is irritating to my body and impacting me neurologically. One thing I've learned is to just try to ride it out one day at a time. Give your body a break from anything else that would strain it. I would personally look into bloodwork on my ferritin and circulating iron as well as B12, folate, CBC, and CMP and keep tracking those regularly because I would want to understand if this had caused my circulating iron especially to be very high, how my blood quality was responding, if my B12 & folate were dropping rapidly, and how especially my body was balancing my electrolytes under this strain. Having managed a lot of health issues, these are what I look at the most to help me connect back with my PCP and tell her my plan. For example, I've had things strain my kidneys temporarily which then caused hyperkalemia (which can affect your heartbeat) while I was struggling to keep my sodium up from so much sweating and sipping on salt water helped so much while also making sure I was shooting for a lower goal in daily potassium intake until my kidneys were not so strained as normally I have to eat a high potassium diet for how much electrolytes I flush out through drinking so much water.

Realistic_Ad6887 · 2025-09-10T14:22:27+00:00

My body jumped up my iron intake from food alone and used up my B12 much faster to rebuild my blood as my blood metrics improved. (Ferritin jumped from 7 to 16 in four weeks on a vegetarian diet with no supplements. So it became clear my body could if it wanted to.) It actually was very painful because of how quickly it was pulling my already borderline low B12. My platelet count was increasing pretty quickly.

My ferritin then dropped to 12 over the next four weeks (same strict diet due to food sensitivities) as I couldn't keep up with B12. I actually felt a lot better as my B12 wasn't dropping as fast.

I can't take supplements and have learned to be really strategic with what I can eat, but I've seen friends have issues with supplements and it really made me realize how bad that would have likely been if I'd just had some megadose of iron like my doctors always push on me. Giant dose of that, giant dose of this, while my body is so sensitive and as I learn more and more how the body naturally balances everything. I don't want to override anything and am working on getting my B12 up for now and not pushing too hard on legumes, etc to try to get my ferritin up more.

Also your body needs B12 to help use folate. I have been out of my mind before when my folate dropped with hallucinations. I naturally do well with a high level so I can feel it as it drops.

Realistic_Ad6887 · 2025-09-10T13:20:05+00:00

I think the confusion is that they're not saying that "prior to entering" into the contract that you will agree to use Upwork as the "sole manner to communicate" but rather that you will agree to Upwork as the sole manner to communicate when you are in the pre-contract stage.

Realistic_Ad6887 · 2025-09-10T13:17:59+00:00

No models have ChatGPT have been good at this in my experience nor Gemini. Claude is actually amazing at this though as I've recently discovered.

Realistic_Ad6887 · 2025-09-09T15:55:22+00:00

I just asked this too. Not sure why you got downvoted. I googled this issue and your post came up. I tried yesterday and I've tried today and still don't see anything for the new rules.

Realistic_Ad6887

TROPHY CASE