I started writing poetry as a kid. Not as some devout religious practice, just in moments when it hit me. When the muse arrived, I had no choice but to entertain her. From poetry, I conjured the fantasy of writing a visually stunning, melancholy film. I never got too far with that creative twinkle, but at least I got to experiment with screenwriting and project it in the theatre of my mind.

Once I became a healing arts practitioner (aka anti-corporate and anti-bullshit) and started seeing the world in new ways, I tried to start writing multiple iterations of a book and dabbled in shorter form writing projects. Ultimately, it took continuously getting smacked in the face with my relationship to work, career, and income to finally see the light and lock-in on one theme of my human experience. The process of writing became a funny, tortured, mind-numbing, cathartic and necessary exploration of where I’m from and where I’d been while bumping back and forth between the guardrails of an “occupational memoir”. It gave me a smidge of hope that I still had time to create a life on my own terms—even though the accumulated pile of reflective and real-time heartbreak along the way made it feel damn near impossible.

The point of it all is to turn pain into purpose, and hopefully inspire folks along the way to have these conversations with themselves and within their communities. Or at least to dial up curiosity around their own relationship to earning a living in America.

Like the saying goes, we’re all just walking each other home. Or, as I would retell it: FUCK. What the FUCK is going on?! Do you feel crazy too?