Quitting my full-time job cracked me open

It wasn't really about the job. It was about taking the risk to imagine a different paradigm.

*note, this piece is quite long so I recorded a 33 minute audio voiceover if you’d like to listen instead of read. FYI I made many mistakes because wow reading out loud is HARD.

Heads up: this piece is about money and my relationship to it. I lay out some hard numbers of how much money I have and how much I’ve made. I know money is incredibly sensitive for us all (a major point of this essay, honestly) so I wanted to let you know up front. I felt a sudden urge to put pen to paper about these ideas over the last few weeks. I’m not used to having that experience of needing to write, so I’ve just followed this thread, even as it makes me a bit nervous of how it might be received. I feel like this is just the beginning of my thinking about this; if you have thoughts, I’d love to hear from you.

Ok now, let’s begin.

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One of the striking things to come from me talking about quitting my full-time job has been the reaction. Here’s where I’m at: I’m not working full-time and haven’t been for the last year and a half. Over that time, I’ve been pretty regularly talking (especially online) about how I don’t quite know what I’m doing and that I’m experimenting with different kinds of work, trying to figure out what’s next and where I’m going. I don’t know whether it’s my lack of clarity about where I’m headed, or that I’m talking about it while I’m in the thick of it as opposed to something more retrospective, or maybe that I’m talking explicitly about money in a public forum, but I’m provoking some interesting responses.

I yanked myself pretty dramatically off the hamster wheel by quitting my job. I was deeply enmeshed, as so many of us are, in chasing the upward climb, ultimately feeling consistently like I was getting nowhere.

Over the last year and a half since quitting, I’ve come to understand that I was living in a torturously narrow reality. I saw my life options, and especially my professional ones, as limited: if I want more money, I need to increase my salary with each new role. Just. keep. trying. to get more money. If I want to grow, I should try to become a people manager. Buuuut ultimately, I’ll probably end up working too much and spending my whole job trying to resolve conflicts, so do I really want that? Maybe if I want to be incrementally happier in my life, I should try to find slightly more values-alignment with each new workplace. And if I want to care less, I should quiet quit until I can shrink work’s presence altogether, while still technically having a job.

In all of those scenarios, my options seemed really limited: I was trying my best to make a more fulfilling life within the confines of, essentially, making what I already had slightly less bad. Those were all the choices I had, after all. Or so I thought….

I’m writing this now because I no longer see my life as that set of myopic options. Since quitting, it’s as if whatever blindfold I didn’t know was covering my eyes has disintegrated.

I’m slowly realizing (and it is in fact a slow process) that my relationship to work and money can in fact be an endless well of potential, experimentation, and opportunity.

And also, that it is possible to have enough.

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Because I’ve been talking about this journey publicly and consistently, I’ve received many comments over the months. They tend to project a similar series of sentiments: resentment, judgement, disbelief, curiosity and shock.

They’re all really understandable. HOW CAN YOU AFFORD TO NOT WORK FULLTIME?! in this economy?? this job market??? how can you possibly take a risk like this right now??

It’s why I talk about money online so explicitly¹. I know it’s a combination of privilege, luck, circumstance, and also hard work, risk tolerance and courage. What I’ve witnessed is that as I speak concretely about things like salaries, retirement, savings, debt, and my money stories, I can feel my shame diminishing. I can feel that it’s the first step towards making different decisions, should I want to (and I do, and I did).

What I’m most interested in digging into here is that knee-jerk subconscious emotion that I’ve been provoking in people as I talk about these things. Those reactions hold so much information, is what I’ve come to understand. They represent our subconscious: what we really think about our own lives and potential and what we really want. And also what we’re really scared of.

I think I’m inciting these kinds of reactions not because I’m doing anything particularly revolutionary. There are many many artists, creatives, entrepreneurs, and business owners who have gone on this path way before me, who have decided they don’t/can’t sell their souls in a stupid job and have taken risks to go out on their own. What I’m doing is that I’m sort of just, revealing it all as it’s happening. I’m talking explicitly about money and the process of TRYING to build a different kind of career before I’ve built the thing. It could crash and burn and then everyone will have watched. I’m not an entrepreneur with a product I’m committed to launching. I’m sort of just trying to build a different life for myself and am pretty confounded at what I’m learning.

I think, without meaning to, as I’ve been sharing this year and a half of my life, I’ve been operating in a three-fold process. I want to lay that framework out here, because I think the real depth comes from taking all three steps. And because I feel like most of us get stuck in step one.

1. Share concrete information about money

2. Acknowledge what comes up emotionally

3. Explore what that might tell me about where I want to go

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Step 1: Share concrete information about money. This is where it immediately all falls apart. We live in a society where people do not talk about money, so we just assume everyone has more than us. They must have less debt, better financial literacy, higher paying jobs, help from their parents. We can say “well I could never do that” when we see them making risky or creative or bold moves with their lives. We can hide behind the opaqueness and the mystery, clinging to stories we make up about all of the things everyone must have that we don’t.

But what happens when someone does talk explicitly about money?

Suddenly, we have cold hard facts in front of us. And yes, maybe they are making more than us, or they actually do have parents supporting them etc etc. Or maybe……it’s not so cut and dry. Maybe when that friend or influencer or former colleague or whomever shares their money situation, we realize their situation is closer to ours than we would’ve imagined. That feels much scarier to admit.

That’s that second step: acknowledge what comes up emotionally.

And that’s what I think I’m provoking in people, if I’m being honest.

Because understanding others’ money situations, especially when it looks closer to ours than not, means that there might be other paths, other choices, other decisions we could be making. And now we have to sit with the irrefutable reality that our way of being might not be all there is for us.

It’s a hard thing to confront when we have in essence given up—given up on finding more value, worth, novelty, creativity, and flexibility in our lives. I don’t think many of us would admit we’d given up, however, but I surely was there myself. The “it is what it is” feeling. For me, my truth was “I will always feel like I’m entry level. I will always be fighting for more responsibility, more money, what I know I deserve. I will never catch a break.” I had, without consciously addressing it, accepted that as my reality.

Ironically, it’s often easier to accept a self-defeating story about ourselves— to accept a life that we don’t really like that much, than to admit that in fact, we might have other options. That we can drive our lives in directions that do feel better for us, and that we are (without even knowing it) choosing the passenger seat.

That is very hard to confront when we realize it.

So I want to share my journey of attempting to do just that:

• I’m going to lay out my money situation

• I’ll dig into some of the emotional reactions that have come along the way

• I’ll attempt to articulate how I’m trying to move away from scarcity and towards abundance, even as I am not quite sure where it’s headed.

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How did I get to the place where I knew I wanted (needed) to quit?

I went back and forth for months before I took the leap. This is where I think many people get stuck. I myself got stuck (hence the months and months). I kept telling myself, you’re quiet quitting already, why would you throw out a 115k salary?!? It’s easy money, you’re working only a few hours a day honestly. It’s a remote job, you can watch tv during the day, you’re stupid for thinking you should leave. Blah blah blah an endless self-gaslighting. And yet—-

I would notice that I’d have an incredible morning before the workday started. I’d take a walk, make myself breakfast, read, and then the clock would hit 9am. I’d sit down at my desk and immediately feel an intense cloud over me. And the cloud would build and build with every Slack message and email, and by the end of the day I’d be angry, depleted, resentful, stressed, you name it. Or I’d notice that as soon as the work hours ended on Friday, I’d feel immediately light. I felt free, like I could do what I wanted, I didn’t have anyone looking over my shoulder, I loved my life again! Except…. I was also so tired and defensive of my time, worried about the short weekend being “wasted” that I’d pack it all in, set a 7am alarm on Saturday and Sunday, schedule back to back coffees with two different people and a random evening event and come Sunday, I’d feel upset that I’d had no time to myself.

It wasn’t about the job, really. Yes, that particular role and organization was absolutely not a good fit for me. But something much bigger was at play.

It was that dissonance, that stark contrast between on and off work hours, something I’d felt for years before; it became too much for me to avoid. I had to admit to myself that I could be moving towards the point of no return. Who would I be if I stayed in a performative computer job where I sent emails all day? What’s on the other side of that utter breakdown? The 115k check was in fact not a neutral thing if I was honest with myself. It was costing me, severely.

And so, on that fateful day in January 2024, I quit.

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How stable was my ‘stability’?

What I want to stress here is that I wasn’t someone who took risks like this. Or at least, that was not at all how I thought of myself. What I know now of course is that I had never stress tested this limit in myself before; I had it in me this whole time. But how was I to know?

I essentially only had 9-5 work references in my family and friend circles (barring a few friends who I thought were living highly unrelatable lives doing more freelance-y things). At the time, I wasn’t close to entrepreneurs and business owners. My parents had both worked jobs in Higher Ed that they’d held for decades. I had only ever gone on a linear job path, raising my salary with each new job, taking time off between jobs only when I had the start date of the next one. I had what I thought was a relatively low risk tolerance.

But over the past few years, I’d started to confront my sense of safety and risk. I began to see that maybe my perception of safety was not an objective truth, but rather, a story I’d told myself to cling to the familiar.

Here were some objective truths:

1. These jobs didn’t make me feel secure. After all, my work path had not been particularly devoid of tumult. I have been laid off two times, and then separately, had a contract job run out and not get renewed. Three times where I have been out of work for months-long stretches in the decade+ I’d been working. I had spent years working in contract roles, constantly fighting to become a permanent employee (and being yanked along in the process: “we’re trying.” I will never forget the time I had to be a coworker’s plus-one to the holiday party because as a contractor, I didn’t get an invite. I was so humiliated). I have had bosses and coworkers who kept me up at night with anxiety spirals and heart palpitations, or who made me cry in the bathroom at work. I have attempted to negotiate my salary in every single job and have never once succeeded. I have applied for— and been rejected from— hundreds of jobs over the last decade. I have learned coworkers who do the exact same job were making more than me. I have never gotten a job through a personal connection, and I have always written cover letters. Hundreds. Of. Cover. Letters. I have worked a mix of corporate and non-profit jobs, and minus a handful, had some tough bosses and work cultures. I was increasingly over it. Moreover, increasingly feeling like all of that was adding up: nothing was guaranteed or secure (financially, psychologically, and emotionally) at any of those “stable” roles

2. I discovered my values. Through those different work environments, I was having the same cyclical thoughts again and again about work. The same kinds of frustrations with things managers did, or ways leadership announced major changes (I mean the list truly goes on and on…) From small to large, patterns started to emerge in the kinds of things I would get upset or fired up about. So I started a “values” note on my phone in 2022 (see image below). And if you’ve known me over the last few years, I started to consistently use the word ‘values,’ when reflecting on work. Maybe that anger and frustration I kept experiencing in those work environments wasn’t just a temporary annoyance; they were my value system. And my ability to exist outside of that value system was rapidly disappearing.

3. I got my first taste of alternative income streams. I started making videos on TikTok in January 2022 about things I was reading and listening to. In Summer 2023, I started to make some money from it. What started as .50 a video grew to hundreds of dollars for some videos, which turned into brand deals where, at one point, I was making $4,000 a video. That was my first time ever receiving a 1099 form; I had never thought of myself as someone capable of a ‘side hustle.’

4. I starting dipping my toes into larger conversations around Capitalism/anti-capitalism, and read books like Bullshit Jobs, Work Won’t Love You Back, The Good Enough Job etc. I started to take a more systemic approach to some of the individual experiences I’d been having. I realized that a lot of my frustration and anger about my jobs and what I had perceived as my own “bad luck,” was actually something much larger than me. I got more language for these issues, and yes, started to understand just how insurmountable a lot of this was.

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What was my financial situation before I quit?

• My income:

  • Full-time job salary: $115,000 gross annual income

  • TikTok income in 2023 (from the creator fund + a few brand deals): ~$20,000 (pre-tax)

• My monthly expenses:

  • My half of rent: $2,000

  • Car insurance: $200

  • Health insurance through my job: $200

  • Groceries, gas etc. are generally pretty high because COL in LA is high

  • A gym membership: $66

  • All the media/entertainment subscriptions: NYTimes, Netflix, Spotify, Apple/Google things, my phone bill, some Substacks etc.: I don’t even know how much but prob $130ish

• What I had in savings:

  • $17,000 emergency savings in a high yield savings account (I consider/ed this my “DO NOT TOUCH UNLESS LAST RESORT” money)

  • $10,000 in a different high yield savings account from my TikTok income (I made a separate account because it felt like different money than my “job.” This was money I was willing to spend)

  • $9,000ish in a high yield savings account for my TikTok taxes (each check I got from TikTok, I immediately put 30% away for taxes)

  • ~7,000 in my checkings account (this is where my paychecks direct deposited and where I paid off my credit card and paid rent etc.)

• What I had in investments:

  • $10,000 in a brokerage account (“medium-term savings”)

  • $55,000 combined across my Roth IRA and rollover IRA (where I’ve dumped every previous job’s retirement account when I leave the job)

Other important things that factored in:

• I had already paid off my 13k car and 30k student loan debt

• I have not taken any money from my parents since I was 22 in 2015 when they helped me pay my student loans for a year so I didn’t have to defer while I was abroad (I have since paid them back)

• I have a partner that I live with. At the time he made ~120k. We split the rent and groceries 50/50

• I do not have kids or pets and I don’t own a home. I do not caretake for aging parents or have any other financial responsibilities

Looking at those numbers might immediately provoke something in you. Maybe you’re thinking about how lucky I am to have that privilege and wiggle room. Maybe you’re thinking about how I didn’t have nearly enough of a cushion to jump ship in the way I did. Maybe you’re thinking I’m actually not good at managing my money and that I prioritized the wrong kind of savings or don’t have enough in investments.

Even without going a step further, we are all meeting those numbers with our own stories and realities. And this is often where we stop. Because this is already so intense, right? This can already bring up SO MUCH STUFF. Even writing all of that down, I feel insecure and worried about sharing. I’m worried that I will somehow get in trouble for sharing it, or put myself in a vulnerable situation to get taken advantage of, or maybe I’m risking potential future work or jobs.

But I’m doing it anyway (steps 2 and 3) because I know that’s just my training, that voice telling me the “right way” to navigate our financial lives. It’s an intense voice because it feels like TRUTH. But it’s no more true than it is just an attempt to keep us in silence, shame, and solitude.

So I’m pushing through my discomfort here because I think there is so much goodness and information that comes from this conversation.

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How did I start to prepare to quit?

Once that realization hit me that I was withering, it felt really urgent all of a sudden. Like wait wait wait and then HURRY TF UP. This act of leaving suddenly felt like self-preservation and survival. But how to actually… do it?

I started talking and thinking about my blockers much more seriously. What were the financial risks and fears? What about the emotional risks and fears? How long could I actually live on the money I had? What would happen if I started to run out? What are other ways I could make money if I couldn’t get a job fast enough? Would I be ok doing that kind of work? What were all the things coming up for me and how likely were they to actually come true?

Here’s what I did to start interrogating those questions:

1. I took stock of my savings and realized I had enough

   
   I realized I had a surplus of money each paycheck, that even despite living my LA life with drinks, dinners and occasional travel, I probably did not need the full 115k + the TikTok money. I was not living paycheck to paycheck.
   
   Coming to that realization was INTENSE, because I absolutely did not feel settled or comfortable. In fact, I felt perversely comfortable NOT feeling comfortable, if that makes sense. Part of it was this feeling that finally I had started to “catch up” after “being behind” (everything is in quotes because nothing is real). I had hit the six-figure mark the year before and it was such a massive milestone for me. Before that I had been making 70k for years and felt like I’d be stuck there for many more while everyone around me plowed ahead. I felt like I’d barely settled into that 100k financial milestone and like it could all crumble in an instant.
   
   The other part of it was confronting that I was playing an unwinnable game. I would never feel like I had enough, whether I actually did or not.

   
   This was also a really intense admission that I had to sit with for a bit: I might not need as much money as I was chasing and putting all my worth and value into (for basically my entire career). Maybe I had enough?!? Even now, it feels wildly radical to state such a thing. As a millennial, it’s in my DNA to be primed for the next economic and political crisis that’s just around the corner. But in some ways, I felt liberation in admitting to myself “if nothing will ever be enough, maybe I should stop trying to chase an impossible reality. I’m tired.”
   
   What I learned when I took stock of my money was that despite making 50-70k for most of my career, I had been able to save slowly and surely. I had to acknowledge to myself that I was financially responsible, thoughtful, and intentional with my spending. And also that I had been torturing myself trying for more more more. At some point, I had to accept that the numbers were telling me I had some security.
   

2. I acknowledged that my priorities had actually changed
   
   I admitted to myself that so much of my dread, malaise, and stress was coming from work. Escaping that was more important than continuing to save money in the immediate term.

   
   That was critical for me. Despite my feelings of scarcity, I decided that if I had to pause retirement contributions and savings (and in fact- that I might have to DRAIN some of that savings), it was worth it. Not to be too hyperbolic— although I realize now it really was that dire— it felt like what I’d be getting in return, the gift I’d be giving myself, was to get my life back. My freedom, autonomy, my ability to breathe and see my life clearly.

   
   Practically, I also told myself that I could spend all of that TikTok savings + 10k of my lifetime savings to float myself during this time. That I had 20k to spend. Once I hit that, I would have to start finding sources of income, be it applying for full-time jobs again, or getting a PT job, or driving Uber Eats or whatever it was. Clarifying my priorities gave me almost immediate solace: breathing room was more important for me in that moment than “building a linear prestigious career” (or whatever it was that I’d told myself I was doing…)
   

3. I gave myself permission

   
   Telling myself I could spend even a day without working felt like unimaginable relief, even just allowing my thoughts to go there and consider that path.
   

   I told myself I could think of this as a sabbatical. Playing with language in a context that made sense to me was important. I told myself, “hey, people take sabbaticals all the time. This is easily explained in future interviews, easy to lay out on the resume” I tested out various justifications, rationale and stories about this decision and what it would mean for me and my career. It didn’t feel like lying (it wasn’t…); it was opening the door to different ways to tell this story and seeing what stuck.

   This exercise helped me gain confidence and clarity and allowed the whole thing to start feeling less mystifying and more attainable.
   

4. I reminded myself that I can trust myself

   
   I thought through what my days might look like without a job and I knew I would have no trouble filling them, even as I’d never done it before (since summer vacation as a kid). I’ve known for a long time that I wasn’t working at my full potential, energy, or capacity. The various jobs I was doing only tapped into 20% or 40% or 80% of what I could give and produce and I knew that even then. That was part of my issue with them.

   
   I also knew that I am intrinsically motivated. That the reason I would mark work emails as unread and procrastinate and drag my feet on stuff was not because I wasn’t good at the job or wasn’t good at working in general. I was underperforming because performing work became too much. I was sitting at the desk for 8 hours a day in a job that required far less. I was so worried about my Slack showing I was online, about sending that first work email so they knew I was there.² It all felt so…meaningless, soul-sucking.
   
   But I just knew that without a boss or a work schedule, I would still want to wake up on the earlier side, that I would still want to take walks and make my breakfast, and make TikTok videos, and take calls with random old coworkers or friends or new internet connections. I want to do stuff, meet people, engage in the world. I trusted that I had momentum and energy; I just needed space and time to find it again.

As I read through that list now, what’s so obvious to me is that basically all of that work was actually about interrogating my thinking, perceptions, and beliefs. The very first step was looking at my bank accounts. The other stuff was way more complicated.

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How much money have I made since I quit working full-time?

As I did before, I want to share my money numbers again so you can see what it’s like for me on the other side. What’s important to note is that I had no idea if my TikTok would continue to provide me with income when I quit; I had hope that it might, but I wasn’t engaged in any brand deals at the time.

My 2024 income (after quitting my FT job in Jan):

I made 85K (pre-tax)³ by the end of the year. I felt like I was flush. After all, I’d quit with the script I’d told myself “be prepared to not make much money this year.” It was absolutely wild. It was also the least I’d worked (hours-wise) my entire working life.

• I made my money in a few ways:

  • Biggest sum (60k) was from TikTok brand deals. I had 15 brand deals that year. Everything was inbound (meaning I didn’t need to pitch myself at all). It was a remarkable thing that I now understand was entirely luck and timing. More on this later, but safe to say, this has not replicated itself in 2025 so far⁴

  • Then, I had a part-time job (15k) that I got through a mutual friend. It was doing social media for a small start up. That was a three month gig.

  • Then, I made a good amount from the TikTok creator fund (10K), money based on the engagement on my videos. I saw consistent virality in 2024 which helped to generate that revenue

• Other aspects:

  • I got on my partner’s health insurance. I pay $200 a month into that, which is surely cheaper than Covered California, the public marketplace. When I was laid off in the past, I had joined Covered California and paid $300 for really shitty insurance (this was back in 2016) so most definitely it’s more today. I very much acknowledge this reality and know that partnership is an important part of this conversation.

  • Because I was making a steady income, I didn’t have to tap into my aforementioned savings much that year (this allowed me to keep going in 2025…)

Which brings me to my 2025 income:

The inbound brand deals have so far almost entirely dried up and my TikTok engagement has generally plummeted (I don’t take either of these personally by the way; it’s the nature of doing something so algorithmically-reliant. The algo will change). So far this year—and it’s almost May— I have made 14K (pre-tax).

• Much of that has come from one brand deal. It’s a deal to make videos for the entire year, with a team I worked with in 2024 (nets out to a far lower rate than the 2024 brand deals, but I’m not complaining at all and also really like working with this team)

• The rest of the money has come from different ventures I’ve been exploring and building. I’ve talked about this online quite a bit but I am attempting to build out a portfolio career. It’s a term I learned pretty recently⁵ and immediately connected with: a career that is built up of various revenue streams from different kinds of work. Whereas I was almost exclusively doing content creation in 2024, my lack of brand deals this year coincided with me admitting I don’t just want to make videos. More on this in a bit, too.

  • I decided to take my Substack seriously and committed to writing a weekly recommendations newsletter on here, and put that behind an $8/mo paywall. This was not an easy decision because the paywall really freaked me out⁶. I’m thrilled at how much I’m enjoying the weekly commitment of writing. I’ve also been so grateful that I’ve been able to funnel people from my social media to a paid subscription. I currently have 3,100 free subscribers and 74 paid, which is $6,500 annualized revenue (this is before Substack takes a 10% cut and Stripe, the payment platform, takes an additional 3%)

  • I have started doing some consulting work. People who follow me online have hired me as an accountability partner, someone to help strategize with them. I have LOVED this work; it lights my brain up to be asking people thoughtful questions and dig into their experiences in a different way. I’d love for this part of my business to grow. I’ve worked with people on friendship dynamics, finding their voice on social media, and clarifying their values and next steps around finding a more meaningful job

  • I have made some money from the TikTok creator fund (around 2K for the year so far)

  • I was hired by a friend to do some voiceover work for their organization

• My expenses have stayed the same.

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What have I learned so far from this experience?

Historically, I’ve thought of discomfort or fear as a HARD NO, a sign that I shouldn’t do something, or that I should be wary. I told myself: if something is right for me, shouldn’t it feel easy and good? Effortless and without any resistance?

Over this past year and a half, I can see clearly that that’s made up. Yes, we have to trust our intuition, and also ultimately, our intuitions are composed of what we know and what we’ve seen. They might need some refining.⁷ (at least that’s what I believe, sorry to the psychics out there).

What I see now is that when I experience discomfort or fear, it might be giving me important information. Not information that I should immediately accept as truth, but information that I should first feel and observe, and then collect and synthesize. It doesn’t mean it’s telling me to not continue with a certain decision. In fact, trepidation or anxiety might just mean the thing feels important to me, a la every bout of nervous diharrea I have before an interview.

Here’s some of the information I’ve collected about myself through this process:

• My natural working pace is much slower than I realized. I could send one email a week happily. I take way more time than I expected between things to respond, which makes me feel both guilty (for my delay, especially if a potential opportunity is on the line) and also flabbergasted that I was moving so fast in my past jobs

• Similarly, I only want to work a few hours a day- in my ideal working life- and then can easily find things for me to do for the rest of the time. I don’t think about “laziness,” or “productivity” or any of that

• I’m actually pretty ok with the idea of money coming from different places. It’s a big adjustment to not have a paycheck with a set amount and instead get little spurts of $150 here, $500 there, $200 here, but I’m working through that and realize creating better systems to track and monitor this will help with my current frazzled feeling (but that at my core, I’m more ok with it emotionally than expected)

• Similarly, I actually do like making videos for brands, and I’m skilled at doing them, and doing them efficiently. When the alignment with the product, org and team is there, I think brand deals are interesting. And I also know that they are ultimately advertisements. In my ideal career, I want a mix of brand deals/internet video things, and a variety of other work (part-time knowledge work jobs where I work for an organization, and then more solo stuff like writing, speaking engagements, consulting etc.)

• I really like the idea of doing work that, at some point, ends (instead of just working a job forever). I like the diversity of work, even at the cost of having to drum up new work again

• I find real value and energy in relationship building. And I’m really good at it. I spend a lot of my days taking calls with internet friends, old colleagues etc. Just realizing that money, work and opportunities can/will probably come from people I know

• When something lights me up, I could spend hours churning stuff out (like this post for example)⁸, but when it’s something I dread, I’m going to procrastinate for weeks. Obviously we can’t avoid things we don’t want to do, so I’m now trying to figure out how to break up the more dreadful parts into easier chunks. Life admin, revenue tracking, making an invoice etc. is VERY HARD for me

• I feel much more generous with my time now; I feel I have an abundance of it, so sure I’ll stop and chat with the random person I ran into at the cafe, why not?

• For me, my Rich Life⁹ very much consists of experiences of going out to eat and drink. It brings me so much joy and peace to get my little coffee, so I’ve tested and validated that that is worth it for me, even when my income is less certain. Depriving myself of those things would make my life acutely worse.

• Somehow, money has become much more neutral to me. It used to be the thing I projected all of my identity, worth, and value onto, and now it’s sort of just..pay checks. I feel much less emotional discussing it, I don’t care nearly as much about growing year over year (for example this year I could very well make half of what I made last year, and I don’t have an emotional reaction to that really). I obviously know money is a necessity but it no longer feels like one I have to tether any depth to, beyond meeting my needs and building a comfortable life for myself. It says nothing about any of my achievements, capacity, or potential. That is a VERY new line of thinking for me.

There’s so much more here but those are some of the big bullets.

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Something else I know for certain is that I’m not special here. Sure, my situation was an amalgamation of very specific circumstances, primarily my TikTok journey (which I know is a very niche experience that’s probably not relatable to most). But I guess I’m not convinced we can’t all have our own ‘TikTok journey.’ By that I mean: some experience where we put ourselves in a different scenario and break out of the narrative of what we can do, who we are, what our limits are, what we’re capable of.

It’s crazy because I say that and I mean it, genuinely. But by the same token, I’m still bewildered at how I did this. I still have remnants of this inner monologue: but you don’t have some sort of artistic skill or entrepreneurial calling that you’re trying to make happen. You’re just…trying to see if you can make something out of nothing? What are you doing?! I often look at people who have made a ton of money consulting, or making digital products, or whipping up a business from scratch and I feel like a fraud when I look through their websites and see how legitimate they all are. After all, I’ve just been chugging along at traditional jobs where I was one of many. I’m still trying to figure out what exactly I can offer, and how to talk about it, and how to make money from it all. But what I do know is that I’m deciding to interrogate the cards I have to play in this life, and realizing, oh wait, I think there are more here than I thought…

I want to make this super clear: I’m not trying to evangelize quitting your full-time job. It’s not about that at all for me, really. Sure, maybe there are people for whom that could be a viable option, but that’s not what I really mean to stir up here.

If it’s not abundantly obvious by now, what I find so thought-provoking and why I think it’s so important to keep talking about this, is the reality that so many (read: almost all of us) cannot, don’t want, don’t even know how to imagine alternate ways of living.

It doesn’t mean (and usually isn’t about) making such explicit drastic changes in your life like quitting a job. I mean maybe it is, but often it might just mean deciding to take a dance class once. Or deciding to practice doing something you explicitly don’t know how to do. Shaking up the confines of your way of thinking and perceiving your life, and seeing what information you start to observe.

Essentially it’s about finding yourself exciting, stimulating and worth exploring.

And then of course, the drastic changes will come in your life. Even if that just means adding a recurring dance class to your routine.

What I’m attempting to get at is through all of the reactions I’ve incited over the last year and a half, I’ve seen clear resistance from people (which I, again, understand wholeheartedly). To even for a second allow ourselves to gaze directly into the eyes of our lives and decisions and ask ourselves:

In what ways am I living in accordance with the things that matter to me, and in what ways am I living a life that is misaligned?

Do I even know what matters to me?

I know that under capitalism, ultimately, we are all living a misaligned life to a large extent. Given the choice, I know most of us would not work, at least not full-time and definitely not in the kinds of jobs we currently have. But I think where I’ve landed in this process is that it’s a false dichotomy we’ve created where we either hate our lives and throw our hands up because there’s “nothing I can do!!!” or we make some intensely dramatic decision to blow up our lives. But what if it’s not all or nothing… what if we just try something, make an experiment, and see what we learn.

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Where do I start if I want to design a more meaningful life?

These are some of my core pillars but of course there are so many ways to go about this. I am no expert but here are some of the ways I started.

1. Figure out what your values are in this season of your life. This is arguably the hardest and most complex part . You have to start noticing: when you feel good and when you don’t. Who around you bolsters and lights you up, and who dulls your shine. What do you buy that makes you happy and at peace and what feels shitty. There are so many ways to start to run little “experiments” in your life. Like literally keep a list of things you observe yourself feeling when you get really emotionally fired up (good and bad) and sooner than later, that value system emerges. It took me probably 2-4 years from a conscious noticing of “I HATE when my boss leads in this way,” to realizing, oh that’s because they’re going against a value of mine, to the next step being, how do I use that to make decisions because my body and mind are screaming at me to listen?

2. Take stock of the hard numbers, the facts. This is in many ways related to values and in other ways very different. After all, this involves some tangible stuff: money in, money out. And yet, it’s also about interrogating that feeling of need and scarcity: when I tell myself I want more money, is it because I actually need it to pay my bills or am I playing that game of more more more? Are there different ways I could make money? How much is actually enough? What are other forms of ‘currency’ that might mean as much, or more for me right now? For me, it was an empowering realization that if I had to take a year or two off from retirement contributions, future me would understand I was giving myself payment in other ways: space, time and freedom.

3. Discover your uniqueness. Again, the tiny experiments where you ask yourself: what do I like doing? What am I good at? What do I find interesting? What from my current role or past roles has lit my brain up? (or conversely, what do I really hate doing and why?) Who in my life do I envy or am I intimidated by? (that thought in particularly can be a VERY revealing place to start). This is not in service of quitting your full-time job necessary; it doesn’t have to be “how can I leverage this into a side hustle?” It could just be, ok I love when I get to do stuff with my hands, like make, build, create. How can I prioritize that type of activity during my week? How can I put more money into that (and take money from somewhere else), knowing that I might unlock entirely new ways of thinking and operating through that work? For me, this was where the TikTok was my biggest tool. Through playing with that app, I discovered my voice and my creativity; ultimately it unlocked a new frame of reference for how I could structure my professional life (would never have anticipated THAT as a bi-product of me making my little internet videos wtf)

4. Find people with whom you feel free to imagine and dream. People who push your thinking in different ways. Who recommend things to read, listen to, and think about the world differently. People who do entirely contrasting work from you, who make way more money or maybe way less money. People that want to brainstorm and question and be curious with you, who want to engage in those little experiments and introspection. If you don’t already have those people in your life, the challenge here is to be intentional and methodical about seeking them out. Start online: find people who challenge systems and push boundaries and follow them. I think if I’d had more Creatives in my life from an earlier age, it might’ve been much easier to break out of “9-5 is the only way” thinking. Ideally you can also find people in your offline life that can bring this out of you. First off, if you have this as a goal, and you are loud about that (“I’m looking for other people who want to push our thinking beyond what’s in front of us”) you will be surprised the kinds of energy you can attract. Sorry this is a bit woo-woo I know…. I can attest however that as I moved with a different energy, people in my life responded in kind. Those supportive dreamers might already exist in your life but are too scared of sounding crazy so they don’t vocalize it. We cannot find our voice without others listening to them and amplifying.

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Who am I right now?

More than anything else, I find myself deeply interesting now. Virtually every day, I give myself new “data” about how I feel, what I want and need, and where I’m getting stuck. And I listen to it.

I now run towards moments where I feel prickly because of something someone said to me or something I saw someone else do or something I heard. Maybe it’s jealousy, intrigue, maybe it’s repulsion, or desire. It’s why I sat here and wrote this longass thing. Old me would have felt DEEPLY defensive, protective, felt a need to be like “but don’t worry everyone, I still feel so scared, and stressed, and worried about money!” Today, I do still feel all those things. I still feel the need to defend myself, I still am deeply worried that I haven’t put enough caveats or mentions of privilege in here. I’m really worried about how this will be perceived and whether I articulated myself well. And also, I’m doing it anyway because it’s piquing my curiosity to get these words out (for you all, but ultimately for myself). Because I’ve noticed my desire to spend HOURS writing this down and surely that is worth enough to push me to do this. I don’t want to shrink anymore when I feel emotions well up in me. It doesn’t provide me much comfort to undermine myself or downplay this strange new life I’m building.

What strangely does, is diving into that unknown, imagining big things that I’d like to do or reach, and ways I want to practice breaking down all the different compulsory lines of thinking in my head. One way I can practice this is to continue sharing about this experience—from the concrete money numbers to the things that are far less certain: where I’m going or how it’ll end up.

I’m reminding myself that I only get one shot at this. I might as well experiment.

I hope you read this and feel that prickly feeling too. That’s the start.

1. See: any of the Instagram/TikTok videos where I talk about money. Start here.

2.

Anne Helen Petersen

calls this LARPing your job. Read her piece here

3. Ended up having to pay 23k in taxes for 2024. This part was rough and very new to me.

4. I have a friend that says hey, say “so far,” instead of speaking with finality that it WON’T happen, so I’m going to put that ‘who knows what can happen’ energy out there

5. I learned it from

Anna Mackenzie

who writes really interesting stuff about this

6. See: my video where I talk about turning it on

7. I have a great podcast episode recommendation here: from the Overthink podcast, their episode on Intuition. They’re two philosophers and they dig into our modern day understanding that our intuition can never be wrong (wrong! it can!)

8. It’s wild that I’ve spent probably 20 hours working on this post?!?

9. Reading the book I Will Teach You To Be Rich by Ramit Sethi was the beginning of my money journey. Can’t recommend it enough. Essentially he says, double down on what you’ve defined as your Rich Life (and figure that out if you don’t know how you’d define it) and then pull back on some of the other stuff. It’s about intentionality and prioritization, not about deprivation and shame.