The Next Chapter

And so it begins. The next chapter. What does that actually looks like? Well, I have no fucking idea. I do know that the paths I’ve chosen to travel down, for a multitude of reasons, are no longer viable. Such paths served a purpose and gave me tremendous insights for my life’s work, but they came at a price that was just too high to sustain.

The sacrifices of health and happiness in order to maintain my integrity as an empathetic and conscious human working in the tech labor force were just too great. I now understand why so many people “go numb” to continue working in corporate America. The numbness is necessary when your nervous system is perpetually under attack from toxic leadership or corporate frameworks designed to extract our humanity and convert it into profit for shareholders.

The entire system we’ve built our society upon is broken and, up until now, many of us could feel it, but few could see it. In 2025, the corruption and dis-ease of extractive systems are laid bare for everyone to witness and process. And choose.

In the context of my journey now, I have choices, but no clear path to sustainability. My desire for my professional path is simple really. I wish to continue doing mission-driven work to build non-extractive systems and continue my simple existence. As a GenXer, I’ve lived through economic collapse many times, several of which took my passion businesses and bled them dry. I learned, licked my wounds and pivoted each time.

But now, there’s simply no clear path forward. I once had a thriving web production and comms consulting business, is that still a thing? Are people still paying for value or are they conditioned to accept the cheapest proposal? Spoiler alert, that’s why I left commercial photography and production work. The market became saturated with cheap labor and companies were no longer willing to pay for quality, at least not at a scale this solopreneur could manage and still pay the bills.

Justifying my worth, as an artist and a professional, has always been a wildly uncomfortable act. But here’s the modern twist, I don’t even know what the market is or what it will bear right now. I know that I harbor a massive skillset that spans a multitude of genres, industries and niches and I know my value.

What I don’t know is whether clients will understand that value or if they even have the means anymore to pay what I’m worth. I know in my crypto industry that high paying advisors are only recognized for TGE projects or direct ROI to VCs. Marketing, comms, community— fuck all that, let the serfs/interns/degen growth guys deal with it.

I’m a systems thinker who’s spent a lifetime documenting and building communities. I’m a strategic comms expert who’s spent decades telling people and brand’s stories. I’m a prolific producer, who along with my amazing cohost, has a podcast that (we hope) will play a vital role in our society as we transition through collapse and into something beautiful— however long that takes.

But the thing I don’t know, the thing that I can’t brainstorm out, is will I be able to create a simple, sustainable business to support me and my pupper long enough to build the art that our world needs right now. Will I be able to see through the fog of chaos and find the threads of mission and sustenance and do it fast enough to plug my bleeding bank accounts and keep the lights on?

I write about this chaos not because it’s fun or feels good to put on paper and share my shitshow with the world, but because I know I’m not alone. My DMs are filled with friends and colleagues who are in the same boat. My social feeds are filled with similar stories of toxic leadership destroying the labor force that built all of the tech that makes our lives better. My news feeds are overflowing with journalists monitoring the labor statistics, the collapsing economy and the soaring poverty rates in real time.

I write about this shit to process the little-t traumas in real time and get it out of my nervous system by publicly acknowledging the reality most of us are living through right now. The fight not to internalize the rejection emails from heartless HR folks is real. The struggle not to internalize the inhumanity of corporations and the normalized abuse of labor is real. The struggle not to give up in utter despair and surrender to the fear is real. And millions are going through it right now. Struggling through a paycheck to paycheck scenario— but WITHOUT an actual paycheck on the horizon. Sit with that one for a hot second and see if your stomach doesn’t totally turn to slime.

What I do know and what I can see is the path forward, for me, includes finding amazing humans who are in alignment and ready to build the systems we need to survive— together. I know this will happen in the most unpredictable of ways, because it always does. And I know that in some convoluted way, I’ll be able to find sustainability in the midst of all of this chaos because that is what I’ve always done.