A Day in the Life (March): Cycles, Money, and the Quiet Re‑Reckoning
Hello, hello. Welcome back to A Day in the Life.
If you’re new to this behind‑the‑scenes series, this is a vulnerable look behind the curtain—behind the door—of my life as I build a business in an overly (or maybe just deeply) saturated online market. Late‑stage capitalism. The global North. The United States. The East Coast. All of these layers folded into the long, slow work of aiming toward income sovereignty and sustainability as a woman of color, as someone who has navigated the corporate system for decades and created her own path, her own way out.
So welcome. 👋🏼👋🏼
I usually try to do this series twice a month. March 2026 has had other plans. Curveballs doesn’t even begin to cover it. There has been a lot happening—globally, politically, economically, culturally—and most likely that will continue. We’re all being affected, from different angles and at different intensities, but deeply nonetheless.
And maybe we don’t even fully realize how deep. How layered it all is. How much of it lives in our bodies before it ever reaches language.
To say it’s hard is an understatement. To say there is a path forward is also an understatement.
One of the things I’ve been sitting with—one of the reasons I didn’t show up twice a month the way I normally do—is this truth about cycles. Everything moves in cycles. Everything is iterative. History repeats itself. Our bodies repeat themselves. Women move through menstrual cycles that never look quite the same month to month. Weeks shift, energy shifts, capacity shifts.
And yet we’re taught to believe in a linear path. A straight line out. That someday we will get out of whatever we’re stuck in—out of survival, out of a job, out of scarcity.
But life isn’t trying to get out of anything. Life is just trying to live.
I don’t say that to minimize what we’re going through. I say it to name something fundamental. We don’t live in bubbles; we live in layers. Cultural, religious, societal, and economic layers are all moving at once.
And I’ve been reckoning—personally and professionally—with the work I do helping people, especially spiritually minded and environmentally conscious people, mission‑driven people, purpose‑driven people.
The people I serve, myself included.
What keeps coming up in conversation, again and again, is safety and security. And it usually comes out as money. I need more money.
Friends, family, potential clients—so many conversations are marked by desperation, by treading water, by fear. Fear of AI taking jobs. Robots are taking jobs. Mortgages. Bills. Survival.
I’m not negating any of it. I live with those questions too.
But what I’ve been filtering, sifting, and sitting with is this: we’re not actually trying to solve for money.
Money is the expression, not the root. It’s that saying—more money, more problems. Even if we all had what we thought we needed, even if retirement was fully funded, houses paid off, debts erased… would the problem go away?
No.
Because money is a societal construct. Money is something that has been given power. If we return to something like Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, what we actually need is much simpler: shelter, food, water, air, warmth, and community. We are social animals.
But because of systems built by people who wanted to hoard power and wealth—colonization, extraction, political control—money became the gatekeeper. I remember seeing an exhibit at the British Museum last year tracing the history of currency. Coins stamped with the faces of Caesars. The same symbolism persists today. Faces on money are not neutral. They represent power, legacy, and control.
Those who hoard wealth are the ones who truly benefit from the system. Debt keeps everyone else working. Consuming. Chasing the next thing—another upgrade, another device, another promise of security. All of it serves those at the top while the rest of us scramble without land, without leverage, without real or cultural real estate to lean on.
This became especially clear in a conversation I had with a potential client. She wanted to know my story—how I job‑hopped, pivoted across industries, repositioned myself, and paid off over $100,000 in combined student and car debt in under a decade after graduating.
But at the end of the conversation, it came down to the house. Keeping the house at any cost. Because losing it felt like failure.
We’re not failing because we bought into the system. We’re not failing because we sustain it. We vote. We work. We pay taxes. We commute. We budget. We cut streaming services. Each of us is a drop sustaining the ecosystem.
And the ones who own the apartment complexes, the monopolies, the conglomerates—the literal and figurative real estate—benefit.
I think we’ve been at the breaking point for a long time. Now we’re feeling the whiplash. The dismantling. The slow death of consumer capitalism.
As individuals, we’re being forced to ask: What am I really willing to decide for myself?
Because if we’re always solving for money, the hamster wheel never stops. Another option—maybe the only option—is minimizing our footprint. Reducing debt. Detaching, where possible, from systems that extract from us even while we sleep.
This is why I’ve been rethinking my business.
I’ve never believed the corporate system was a path to freedom. I’ve always tried to speak to people who already see it for what it is and want to repurpose it on their own terms. But unless we’re all going off‑grid completely—and even then, money still shows up—we’re still inside this economy.
(See more in my Q&A with Anna Schmunk 😍😍)
What we can do is decrease dependence and increase agency. Pivot. Reiterate. Choose where we place value.
So yes, I’m still offering a 90‑minute clarity and strategy session. Sometimes that looks like resume design. Sometimes it looks like reframing your entire relationship to work. Because we still need to get paid.
But I’m taking a big step back from “repurposing the corporate ladder” as a central offering. The ladder has been broken for decades. We’re just now feeling it.
I’m still in business. Just not in the same way. I’m prioritizing play, experimentation, design, and writing. There’s another branch coming. I’ll share when it’s ready.
What isn’t going away is this series. Or the essays. Or the long conversations about capacity—mental, emotional, spiritual, economic, ecological—with Sarah on the podcast. I just spent time with her in Washington, from Spokane to Seattle, where we recorded an episode together in person. Those relationships—those connections—feel like the real light right now.
As capitalism continues to fracture, what remains are people. Community. The ways we hold each other as we’re all, in different ways, being remade.
Thank you for being here. For listening. For staying. 🌱🌱
If you want to support this work, you can work with me and/or share this newsletter. I’m grateful for it. Truly.
Please take care of yourself. Rest. Drink water. Get sunlight. Eat well. Cry. Yell. Hug yourself and the people you love. All of it is medicine.
Whatever is meant for you—whatever is coming from you—deserves gentleness as it grows.
I’ll talk to you in the next one.
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