EXIT RAMPS

There are days that I want the exit ramp, the easy way out. They happen most often when I can’t see what’s coming next in my work life.

Usually it starts on social media. I see an artist, small business, or a company on instagram is hiring – most often for an entry level role. And that’s when I start to try to get out of the uncertainty of not knowing what comes next by doing the mind flips of how I can contort myself to fit into the available job.

I’ve taken that exit ramp twice in the past four years. Now, I put my indicator on but quickly change my mind and stay in the lane I’m in, but not without feeling some small amount of guilt that I’m not willing to do whatever it takes to make money.

This January marks 10 years of working for myself. Being a freelancer, an independent contractor, a small business owner – however you want to put it, none of the titles feel like the right fit. They conjure images of boss babes and entrepreneurs and people who have their shit together because they’ve built something shiny and successful and profitable. Artist and creative are my preferred identifiers and are uncomfortable companions with business for me. I still believe a story that art is abundant and exploratory and thrives on taking risks, and business requires scarcity and stability and certainty. I’m working on changing this story.

I don’t know if I could have articulated this when I started working for myself, but the reason I needed to go off on my own was the promise of freedom. At the time, I thought that freedom meant having enough time to make my own food (and green juice, something it took 9 years to figure out how to prioritize in my schedule). I love that past version of myself who had so much still to learn about what it means to be healthy, and that my definition has widened and expanded to include more than just food. What hasn’t changed is that having the freedom to take care of myself in all of the ways my body requires is still essential to feeling free for me. Working for other people – and this often includes clients – makes me feel like I have to abandon parts of myself in order to meet the expectations and requirements of the person paying for the work. 

I suspect this is a function of capitalism. Being human, having human needs, is so inconvenient when competition and productivity and paying as little as possible are the bases of the system. In fact, most businesses have power because they create environments that require humans to set aside some of their basic needs for 40 hours a week in exchange for pay. But it’s more than just basic needs; it’s also setting aside some of our humanity by putting on a work mask and sliding into roles that actively require suppressing and hiding bodily functions and emotions in favor of appearances, and those who uphold that system hold the power when they deny anyone the space needed to be themselves. Making money is essential for survival, so while we can call it a trade, it’s a very unequal one, where one side has far more power than the other.

I have yet to work for an industry and/or corporation that fully prioritizes the needs of the humans who work for it over profit and ensuring production. Competition even applies to the workers within the system, and if you aren’t willing to put aside your needs for the good of the company, there’s probably someone else who will. And because profit = winning within a competitive system, there is often a culture of disposing of any parts that aren’t profitable or that take away from productivity in the constant striving for more and better. Profit and productivity become the currency of worth, for both the human and the inhuman parts of the system, and I have contributed to this and internalized it in various ways throughout my working life.

These were the things I longed to escape from when I took the exit ramp to working for myself. And so I’ll choose the periods of uncertainty if it allows me to learn more about my own power and ability to create the world I want to live in. Choice is its very own own type of power.

The one thing I know, in the deepest parts of my soul, is that I am determined to find a way to work where I can be whole – fully myself in the ways that my body needs for pleasure and purpose and thriving – while making a living. I want to let go of the stories I have around money deprivation, some of which are from childhood trauma and some inherited from my early adult years. And I would love nothing more than to find other people seeking the same path.