I've decided to write for a living.
I’ve tied a lasso around myself and drug my body back from hell more times than I can count.
Well… “decided” may be bending the truth a bit.
I feel I have no other choice but to write for a living. And being that I have the most feral kind of ADHD, I’ve decided to use the entire internet as my accountability partner on this journey.
What spurred this on? Probably when I returned to Substack a few days ago, resigned to the fact that I have to make money from writing now and no other platform makes monetization as easy as Substack does—even though they let Nazis say whatever they want—and today found myself at #6 on the “Rising” list for “Faith & Spirituality”. It’s so hard to categorize what I write about, and I know other astrologers and mystics deal with this too, because is astrology spirituality? Yes, for some, but it’s also culture, and philosophy, and geology, and history, and politics… plus, I don’t even primarily write about astrology like I used to.
What do I write about? Probably a good question for someone to answer if they’re asking people to pay them to write. Nowadays, I feel like the best way I could sum up my writing is: like one of those Martha Stewart lifestyle magazines, except instead of boho country interior design and gluten-free living, I’m talking about cultivating your anti-capitalist lifestyle. Anti-capitalist living, like slow living. I don’t think I’m an expert on this at all, but then again, expecting perfection would go against my anti-capitalist values.
The thing I get really fired up about, though, is specifically the human mess of running your own business when you hate capitalism, but every time you look, it’s still fucking capitalism outside. I spent 5 years in an MLM, absorbing every facet of the capitalist girlboss lifestyle. I learned a lot about business in those 5 years, and even more about myself—namely that I did not want to live the lifestyle I had been sold and was voraciously pursuing. I learned that I loved helping people build their businesses and working with them in a 1:1 context, but the business vehicle I was trying to operate with was a lie.
I’ve been up close and personal with the strongest proponents of the manifestation industrial complex, I’ve rubbed shoulders with “self-made millionaires” in the MLM space and even called some of them my friends. I bought the lifestyle that was sold to me, hand over fist, and leapt with no hesitations. Now, having drudged myself back up from the depths, I haven’t been able to extinguish the fire in my belly that wants to engulf the most extractive forms of business and create something entirely new in the ashes.
There is a better way to do business. There is a path back to the tenets of commerce as sacred exchange—and I believe the internet witches I surround myself with are at the forefront of this shift. It may have been born out of necessity and exclusion, but the model of circular economies where resources are distributed according to need rather than profit is gaining popularity as more and more people confront their internalized capitalism, and begin dissolving it.
I’ve tied a lasso around myself and drug my body back from hell more times than I can count. I spent years believing I was inherently flawed and untrustworthy and manipulative, because I had no idea I was autistic and that urge to lie wasn’t an evil within me, but the self-protective mechanism of masking. I have always struggled to find and maintain “regular” employment, and before I knew I had ADHD I thought my resistance to living by an imposed schedule was just laziness and an “internal money block”. I’ve been homeless more than once, lived in my car, relied on sex work to survive, and still struggle with housing instability to this day.
For the first three decades of my life, I was my own shaming witness to the things I was experiencing and blamed myself for all of it. But now, I know better. Back then, I didn’t understand (or care to understand) the extent of capitalism’s reach and the ease with which it devours entire worlds. Back then, I thought I was unique in my “failure to launch,” but now I’ve lived long enough to see how generational these results have become.
I know better now. I still experience shame, and confront internalized capitalism on a daily basis, but I know better than to believe the lie of individualism that says I alone got myself into this mess and I alone must get myself out of it. Plus, I have a family now, and mouths to feed. I love to be depended on in this way, but it doesn’t make capitalism any easier to navigate.
So, I’ve decided to write for a living.
I believe in the strength of the underground mycelial network, and I believe in each person’s ability to get in touch with that web of resource. It’s always there, waiting for us to tap in and get online. The mushrooms have much to teach us, and the first lesson of theirs which I’m integrating in front of you, in real time, is that we look out for each other.
Thank you for reading!
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