Writer, maker, and keeper of half-finished ideas
For one month, I put my real rates and anonymized invoices on my website — a move roughly zero freelancers are comfortable making. Here's the full ledger, what strangers said, and why American creatives are so weird about money in the first place.
Accepting a compliment, saying a number out loud, and explaining my job to a stranger at a barbecue — somehow these are the hardest parts of my creative career. Here's what I've learned about the social awkwardness nobody puts in the job description, plus the scripts I now use to survive it.
My drafts folder is a graveyard of almost-pitches, half-written apologies, and one email to myself from 2016 that still stings. I went digging through the unsent messages and found out what they have in common. Spoiler: it's never the timing.
Before I make any big creative decision — taking on a project, quitting one, charging more, charging less — I run it past a board of directors that technically does not exist. Here's who's on it and exactly what they say.
Portfolios are highlight reels, and mine is no exception. Here's the messy, invisible infrastructure — the unpaid pitches, the fellowship rejections, the 2 a.m. group texts — that actually built my creative career.
I logged every project, submission, and invoice for a full year, then compared the numbers to what I *thought* I'd accomplished. The gap between feeling productive and being productive was humbling — here's the framework so you can run the same audit on yourself.
Not every shelved project is a failure. Here are the five half-finished ideas I've carried the longest, what each one taught me about my own creative wiring, and the three-question test I use to decide what deserves another look.
From a cinder-block dorm desk to a kitchen table that doubled as a mailing station, every workspace I've had tells a story about how much I believed I was allowed to be creative. Here's the tour, clutter and all.
The novel at 12,000 words. The podcast that got exactly one episode. The Etsy shop that lived for three glorious weeks. I'm giving my creative graveyard the tour it deserves — no shame, no lessons, just affection.
Leuchtturm notebooks, a $400 course, a subscription I forgot to cancel for two years — I've bought it all in pursuit of feeling like a Legitimate Writer. Here's my honest accounting, plus the free stuff that actually moved the needle.
I opened the box of abandoned notebooks I've been avoiding for years, and honestly? It was like a museum tour of every version of myself. Here's why I've stopped being embarrassed by the things I didn't finish.
After a decade of unfinished everything, I completed one (1) entire project. These are the five things that actually made the difference — no hustle-culture nonsense, I promise.