And then?

On March 8, 2024, I left my job at a company I’d been with for 8 years. I made the decision nearly a year earlier, and between many months of saving and a significant bonus from a company merger, I had seven months of expenses in savings and another two-ish months in investment accounts. I had a lot of plans, without any capital P plan.1 The intention, broadly, was to work for myself. I figured that by August I would have something bringing in money and that would continue to extend my runway, thereby giving me more time to slowly build something.

And then… well, a lot of things happened. Not having a job did not stop me from working.2 I wrote newsletters and sold planners and put out weekly podcast episodes and mostly made no money, which was fine because I wasn’t really trying to make money. I was constantly worrying about whether I was “doing it right” and also I was happy. I became a regular at an open mic again. I wrote, and then published, a poetry collection (and then wrote another one).

Before leaving my job, I imagined that I was going to “take a break” and live my life like someone on vacation. I pictured days spent reading books and watching shows and being at rest. But one of the things not having a job illuminated was how much I love to work.3

I did not have money coming in by August. I did a few weeks of work for my previous employer while someone was on maternity leave, but I wasn’t any closer to any kind of client work. I started just now to write an explanation of why that was—a reflection on what kind of person I am and how I work on things, but I couldn’t land on a sentence that felt true. Maybe the truth is that I didn’t really want to be doing client work.

In early August we started Biggest Little Zine Fair, and pretty quickly I started acting like that was my job. And then I did happen into some client work—my old boss needed someone to setup TikTok Shop at his new company, and he knew I was experienced with setting up e-commerce platforms where everything was new and bound to break. I did that for three months and made (accounting for taxes) not quite three months of rent. So, somehow, the runway had extended. I felt both like it was magical that paying work had appeared when I needed it to, and like it was irresponsible that I hadn’t made an effort to make the money appear.

By December we’d ended the TTS work, but they wanted to launch a podcast—something I had experience with—so we signed a new contract. I realized pretty immediately that I hadn’t charged them enough money, but it felt like so much to ask for in the moment. When we signed the contract it was more money than I could imagine anyone wanting to pay me to do something I was actually interested in (and I’d already upped my price from what I was initially going to ask for). And then I was a podcast producer! When we renewed the contract I asked for more money, and they (eventually) gave it to me.

And so in 2025, podcasting paid my bills. To a (much) lesser degree, zines did too. BLZF got several paid gigs teaching zine making workshops for nonprofits, and I sold several hundred dollars of zines at events (not enough to pay rent, but groceries, certainly!).

In both cases, it just kind of happened. Which isn’t to say that I didn’t work hard, but there’s no… system. I was good at a job for eight years and made a podcast as a passion project for four years, so someone asked me to make their podcast. I threw myself into zines and organizing the fair like it was a full-time job at the same time that zines were/are becoming increasingly mainstream. That isn’t a repeatable process, or even something I tried to make happen. Which is fine, in theory. I just don’t know what happens next.

This week we confirmed a thing that had been looming—the brand I’d been working with is bringing the podcast in-house to cut costs, so my work there will be finished in the next month. I’ll have money to get me into January, and then… I have no idea.

At this moment, I don’t have a single tangible commitment in 2026. There are things that will probably happen—I don’t anticipate BLZF going away—but there’s nothing to put on a calendar or orient myself toward.

I could not have anticipated what this year would be like, so I am trying my best not to read into the fact that I don’t know what next year will be like either. It could be anything, I tell myself. That’s exciting. Be excited. It could be anything…