Only Looking Forward: One Year into My Journey as a Consultant
Just over a year ago, I decided to quit my job and start my own consulting business. In honor of my first year, I wanted to reflect on my experience with the journey so far. On the surface, it reads like a pretty straightforward story, a story of a person entering a new phase of their career or wanting to lean further into their expertise in new ways. This sentiment certainly rings true, but it was also a deeply personal decision borne out of a series of extremely challenging and complicated personal and professional circumstances. What I have come to learn is this kind of journey does not seem to be that unusual from others who have taken a similar leap. But what has felt especially personal about my experience is that it was triggered by a series of circumstances directly related to my identity as a disabled person, specifically a person with chronic illnesses.
When Everything Changes, Sometimes You Do Too
Before the beginning of the pandemic, I was already positioning myself for some sort of career change. I knew I wanted to continue working in the anti-violence field and to be able to thrive in my skillset. Then, as we began to see the severity of the spreading virus and as the workforce experienced widespread layoffs and hiring freezes, I decided to stay put at my job for a while longer and hold onto the financial stability it provided me. As I continued to work remotely during the pandemic, I became increasingly aware of my identity as a disabled person, in a way unlike ever before. While my invisible condition had at times presented challenges in my work, it never really prevented me from gaining access to the kinds of jobs I wanted, which was a privilege I had for years. Prior to the pandemic and shifts in my workplaces, I also luckily had empathetic and supportive leaders and never felt like my disability was a focal point in my job, let alone perceived as a burden. Being a high-risk, immunocompromised person in a global pandemic changed all of that for me.
In addition to having daily anxiety about what might happen to me if I caught COVID-19 and taking extreme preventative and protective measures to avoid catching it, I was also facing the very real challenge so many disabled Americans have endured of navigating workplaces that are not designed to accommodate the most vulnerable. I faced this even though the work I do as a project manager can be done fully remotely. After feeling forced to choose between protecting myself from a potentially deadly or life-altering virus and appeasing my employers, I decided to leave the traditional workforce entirely. And in April of 2021, I officially ventured out as a freelance project manager and consultant.
Hearing the Call, Honoring the Self
Once I decided I was ready to quit my job, the decision to actually do it was easy. Over the years, I had seen several of my colleagues leave their jobs, often without “something else lined up.” The vast majority were people I considered mentors, people who have years, and some even decades, more experience than me. I watched my mentors and even some peers walk away from toxic workplaces and toward a new kind of freedom. I recall wishing I had the same kind of expertise and courage to do something like that. I even recall thinking it would never be possible for someone like me, someone who has complex health needs and has relied upon jobs to provide me with access to reliable and affordable healthcare. Living under ableist capitalism has made employers the gatekeepers of healthcare for people, as opposed to the government being responsible for keeping its people healthy, while also being less accessible for disabled people who are most in need of reliable healthcare. In the end, I began to feel like the barriers of healthcare coverage and cost mattered far less than preserving my mental and physical health by walking away and figuring it out as I went.
An important distinction remains that while the decision ultimately was easy, the journey itself has been far from it. It is often challenging to figure out how to do certain things I’m no expert in, or how to juggle the competing interests of my personal desires with the needs and deadlines associated with my projects and clients. When I started working on this piece, I was in a very different mindset (and the state of current affairs was also different). I was on my way toward getting new chronic illness diagnoses and all that would follow. Even still, in reflecting on my decision to quit my job, and assessing how I felt about it last year compared to today, I can truly say the new health challenges I’ve faced as of late have only further engrained my certainty that doing so was the right choice. Having more complex healthcare needs than before, I feel even less suited for or drawn toward a traditional job that may never understand my needs, let alone meet them.
Before the pandemic, I often found both my identity and my community through my work. It’s quite commonplace in the anti-violence field, and it keeps people burned out while also feeling guilty if they leave. But it is possible to have a passion for your work or your expertise without letting it consume you as person and without relying solely upon it for your sense of self and community. As Arthur C. Brooks has written, and as I have spoken about in a previous blog post, a job is not an identity. Disavowing myself from these norms has allowed me to create my own priorities for what is most important in my life and my career, placing a tangible value on my time and energy and skills in new ways, choosing which things I can and will focus on, honoring the needs of my body and my spirit. Of course, there is inherent privilege baked into everything I am saying; I understand not everyone has access to the options I've had on this journey. I recognize this truth alongside another: There are far more people with the capacity to reject the constraints of the capitalist workforce than there are people out there doing it.
Dreaming Big, Moving Slowly, Breathing Deeply
Looking forward at the possibilities ahead of me, something I have become increasingly interested in is creating a platform and community for others out there on their own – creators, freelancers, consultants, and more – and amplifying and supporting them. I have a few ideas of how I can continue to deepen this effort and have even created some blueprints of the future of my consulting business. But the beauty of it all is that my goals and dreams can and likely will change and grow alongside my own change and growth. Within the constraints of a traditional job, if your goals do not align within an approved comfort zone or political position, you must suppress your own growth and needs to survive in the workplace. So, many whose identity is their job find themselves disjointed from their own selves, torn between the self they inherently are and the self they have attached to a job they have outgrown. Being a consultant has given me the freedom to explore an identity outside of my job and to explore my interests and desires within my career, on my terms, at my pace. I never imagined I would quit my job, and now I can’t imagine ever going back.
Whether you work at a traditional job, or you’re a freelancer or creator, please know you have inherent value – your work and labor have inherent value and you as a person have inherent value, on your own, separately from your job. If you’ve thought about taking the leap into consulting or non-traditional work, please know that you are capable and that there are others in this world eager and prepared to support you. You are worthy of a life that brings you joy, gives you peace, and allows you to honor yourself, without the qualifiers of a job title, salary range, or resume highlights.
These days, I challenge myself to give different answers to the questions, “What do you do for a living?” When asked, sometimes I will respond with, “I vibe,” or “I love.” Sometimes I might say, “I worry” (that one is a joke that people with anxiety disorders might like). Other times I might just state that I exist, that I simply am. Because no matter what work I do, no matter how passionate I am, no matter how much expertise I have gained, no matter how much I earn, I am still always striving to be so much more than that too. I am continuously striving to live, as freely and as fully as I can.
If you are considering quitting your job and would like to chat about it, I am available for consultation. You can also join my Patreon to gain access to additional content and even guaranteed consult time at certain tiers.
