Creative Freedom After Financial Trauma: Why I’m Done Chasing Money
Updated: Aug 20
Hey! Hi there! Sorry, it's been forever, but... whew... I survived rolling out our new short-term rental and hosting guests for World Cup and honestly, that felt pretty damned good.
And I guess it isn't surprising that I've needed some time to decompress, re-evaluate, and just declutter my mind, house, and yard.
I've spent the past three years focused on renovating a house for sale, then renovating Cottage East AND the attic of Cottage West, and then playing catch-up on close to an acre of land gone wild (thanks so much for the weeds, Mother Nature, I really appreciate all your hard work... NOT).
And while the yard is at least another year away from being fully conquered - and that's me being hopelessly optimistic - I had returned to my goals list for the year and was scurrying about trying to get some of it done.
One of my goals was to get on more podcasts. I've been on three this year and I will be recording another this Thursday. Another is scheduled for November. And not just writer-based podcasts. I have plenty I can talk about - trauma, poverty, teen motherhood, entrepreneurship, short-term rentals, and of course, writing.
And to be completely truthful, I didn't particularly think about why I wanted to be on podcasts other than word of mouth and perhaps getting my books into more people's hands.
And a huge part of my life for the past 21 years of entrepreneurship has been "find the money, chase the money, get the money." Poverty traumatized me. And I've spent the past 3+ decades running as fast and as far as I could from it. Just for s&g's, I googled and learned that, for my region, our income is now considered upper middle class. You could have knocked me over with a feather at that news!
I mention this because, at the core of my drive for income is the deep and abiding fear, "I never want to end up broke and homeless again." I mean, nothing is for sure in the world, but it would take some seriously bad circumstances for that to ever happen again, and yet I still fear it.
In any case, on a lark, while listening to The Creative Penn podcast I had a general concept for a podcast proposal and at the same time, I had been looking once again at finishing Quit Your Job, Change Your Life - a book I started writing around 17 years ago. I fired off a proposal to Jo Penn, mostly expecting a "no thanks" and instead I received a cautious "tell me more" and "could you send me the ebook to look over."
I stared at the email, reread what I had written, and... I didn't respond. In fact, I still haven't.
Now for some context here, Jo Penn is a voice nearly every Indie author who has been around the industry for any amount of time, and y'know conscious, has heard of if not listened to. She is a futurist and her podcast is at the top of my list every week. To say that Jo Penn knows the ins and outs of the Indie author business is an understatement. And honestly, I have been absolutely tongue-tied the two times I've met her face-to-face. Embarassingly so.
So, sure, there was a bit of a "OMG, she's at least somewhat interested, what do I do?!" The book was around 2/3 finished, still is, and I was wondering if I should send her a partial manuscript, or what.
More importantly though, a sense of dread and discomfort was rising up in me.
It wasn't performance anxiety.
It wasn't imposter syndrome.
It was more of a "This is not a good fit. I've proposed a podcast topic I can't deliver on as well as I want to."
And as I wrestled with that, and began to comb through the Quit Your Job, Change Your Life manuscript, I began to understand what it was that was bothering me and why I needed to drop the Quit Your Job manuscript like a hot rock, reply to this amazing podcaster and tell her I'd had an epiphany and that I apologized for wasting her time.
And here is the epiphany: I don't want to chase the money anymore. At least, not with my writing projects.
The short-term rentals I run? Sure, squeeze that juice. Provide a fantastic place for people to stay - give them something to gush over and do it for a reasonable price that is miles above what a regular rental property would earn me. The ones that I have are enough to ensure I have my basic needs met for the rest of my life.
But I realized I had been chasing a fever dream fueled by trauma and the seemingly endless pursuit of a safety net. And that was...
Get on The Creative Penn podcast with a groundbreaking (at least in my mind) new self-help book that would sell like hotcakes once Jo had me on the show.
"Hell, maybe I'll earn enough to jumpstart creating that basement studio apartment I want to install in Cottage East. So much better than waiting a couple of years to accrue the funds necessary through scrimping and saving."
But chasing the money has uncomfortable side effects. Over the years, I have found myself making decisions about what to write next that aren't necessarily what I am interested in writing in, and that makes zero sense. Quit Your Job, Change Your Life is one of those projects.
I've hustled, HARD, for this life. And now that I have an income generator that is very nearly debt-free, I have the ability to pivot, should I need to, from short-term to long-term rentals, or even mid-term rentals. In other words, I don't HAVE to earn money through my writing. I think that I still will, but it isn't a hard line in the sand or an edict of "I must depend on my writing income or find something else to do." I have the funds to live comfortably enough and not stress over it.
Despite reviewing the money and budgets over and over, I'm still struggling with this concept. It is damned hard to lay down nearly 40 years of a "chase the money" trauma pattern and let it go enough to visualize a different way of living and working and dreaming.
But I can't help smiling when I imagine what it could look like, and what I could accomplish if I followed my muse completely. And I also can't help thinking that it will still pay off monetarily as well. The books will still sell, and with more books, more income will most likely appear. And I will keep trying to get on podcasts, still do very passive marketing (sales promos, giveaways) and build my audience through my monthly newsletter. Chasing the money just won't be my focus.
And that feels... rather delightful. As if I can breathe again. Or that anything and everything is possible and completely within my reach. How weird is that?!
In a few days I will drive to The Writer's Colony in Eureka Springs, Arkansas. I'm really looking forward to those six days of quiet focus on this next stage of my life. I'm ready to dive into the joy of creating.
Anyway, thanks for reading and I hope you too can chase your dreams, even if they have to start small and grow over time. They are so very worth it.
p.s. Thanks for responding to my proposal, Jo, and I apologize for not messaging back sooner. If you've taken the time to read all of this then I hope you will now understand why.
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