As You Wish

I started working for myself in 2014, one year after it became clear that I was no longer capable of working at a standard 9-5 job. Despite my academic accomplishments, including a 3.99 GPA upon graduating from Stanford, in addition to other examples of so-called lifelong potential, my cadre of mental health issues meant that according to a 65-paged document documenting the workings of my mind:

Later in 2013, Esmé's psychiatrist documented the impact of Esmé's mental health conditions and her ability to work in a structured environment. The note stated that she cannot work a 9-5 job in a structured environment and needs to be at home to nap frequently or will nod off at work, and intermittent fluctuation of mood and psychotic symptoms that impair reality testing... She also cannot meet deadlines necessarily if she experiences a symptom flare-up.

Prognosis. This is going to be a life-long condition. She will probably not be able to return to work in a structured environment, though she could be productive under her own work conditions from home.

In the photograph above, you can see my office; you can see my iPad mini propped on a stand that shows one of a seemingly infinite number of business classes I’ve taken since 2014. I cannot work under ordinary conditions; therefore, I began to work freelance until 2020, when I put together an official business under the auspices of an online writing school with a single employee.

2020 was also the year that the pandemic began in earnest. People wanted to find things to do at home, preferably online; in addition to seeking sourdough starters and diving into In Search of Lost Time, the popularity of online education shot through the roof. My self-employment had never been particularly fruitful, but in 2020, I made multiple six-figures from people who were genuinely curious about writing personal nonfiction. It was exciting. It was surprising. And unfortunately, it also fooled me into thinking that such revenue was normal for a small business that had finally taken on an employee.

Over the following four years, as people began to return to pre-pandemic life, registrations for our classes dropped, and dropped, and then dropped some more.

Of course, I panicked; I felt like a failure. Checking the business accounts became a terror-inducing practice that involved moving money around so that I could pay for the Zoom account, our email accounts, domain fees, and so forth. And I kept thinking that if I could just figure out how to make the business work again, I wouldn’t have to be so perpetually stressed.

So we tried all kinds of things. We went from running quarterly cohorts to evergreen classes while still bringing in incredible guest lecturers, running co-working sessions, and having group coaching calls. Meanwhile, our profit was in the negative. I was persistently desperate to find some way to pay my employee’s salary—I always prioritized her pay over my own—and the twice-a-month payroll created stress that pressed upon me like an anvil on a plum.

At the end of 2022, my one employee—someone I loved dearly, and whom I wished well upon her goodbye—left to pursue her own goals. By the beginning of 2023, C had been diagnosed with bone marrow cancer. With that development, no one expected me to care about or work on my business. My life became focused on hospital visits and learning about lymphocytes and watching the results of blood tests as though they were the most crucial code, which they were. The business continued to flail as yet another stressor in one of the worst years of my life.

I’ll add here that plenty of people told me to shut down the business. Many of my peers, who had also experienced a nosedive in revenue as the pandemic money came and went, kept their businesses but also took jobs as baristas or consultants. I hesitate to say that they were privileged to be able to do so, but I believe that it’s not an exaggeration to say that if I tried to do the same, I might not survive the experience.

I’m still at it. I’m selling a workshop for people who want to teach workshops. I’m running a pre-sale for a second book about journaling through difficult times. Neither is doing particularly well so far—which doesn’t mean that it won’t. Maybe I’ll find a way to encourage more people to enroll. Maybe my marketing is just suffering from a lack of… something. Something that I’ll find eventually, or I won’t. I’m not sure why I’ve been so exhausted these days, but the last two weeks have had me flattened in bed. Sometimes, I manage to put on a business class on my iPad stand. Maybe she knows something I don’t. If I just figure it out, I’ll be all right.