Today I am channeling a lil Carrie Bradshaw moment after absolutely OBLITERATING the first three seasons of Sex and the City recently, typing this out while crossing my legs like bona fide business woman. I also slept on my neck so wrong last night, so imagine my head at a 45 degree angle, laptop propped up high so it meets my eyes. Can you say girlboss?

“There is never a right time to take a leap of faith,” my therapist told me over zoom a couple of months ago. Since being medicated and now that the Spring sun is seeping into my pores, I really only see her through a teeny webcam once every few weeks, where she’s been responding to my same statement for close to a year - “I think I’ll be able to quit my job soon.” Two sessions ago, though, the sentiment changed. “I think I need to quit my job” slipped out of my lips halfway through the conversation, somewhere between “were you and the family able to see the eclipse?” and “I am considering religion.” It came after I found myself taking a client call about ten minutes before my children’s art class started, burrowed away in a storage room of paint supplies.

I know I got you non-profit girlies with the relatability of this next statement: the arts organization game is no joke. I have been wading in it since I graduated at this point, treading water with like-minded creative types who were also trying to figure out their own footing. Nowhere else can you absorb the energy of such inspiration and talent on such a consistent basis while simultaneously facing the inability to pay off a monthly parking ticket from the city road on which you work. I am not here to shit-talk non profit organizations, but to set the scene.

The thing is, my goal has never been to lead a department or manage anyone besides myself really - I thought it was at one point, though, as a high school student who loved girl-in-big-city movies like 13 Going on 30. The content I consume has not changed much, but the urge to contort myself into someone else’s vision of success has. So, lately I had been asking what that next step was going to be, if not traipsing through the streets of Manhattan like a badass Miranda Preistly type. The more I looked into my working history, the more it became evident that I was always looking for a cushion in case my own business didn’t work out, without realizing that exact cushion is the reason I never had the time or full drive to do what needed to be done for myself. Nothing like the fear of not meeting rent to make you pull yourself up by your bootstraps.

So we arrive here, in the gray area between holding onto working for someone else and reorganizing my small business to support myself. I look forward to the time when I look back in this moment and am confident that I made the right decision. For now, it feels like I am at the tippy top of a roller coaster.

“I couldn’t help but wonder: Can you get to a future if your past is present?” [SATC Season 5, Episode 3, “The Perfect Present”].