On being paid to exist.

People sell their farts in a jar, you can be a full-time creator.

This summer will mark eight years since I started really posting online. And I don’t mean posting on Facebook and Instagram for friends and family to see, I mean actually putting myself out there, trying to make a career out of existing on the interwebs. I don’t have much to show for it, no offense to my 9 paying subscribers. I love you, but I can’t pay my bills with Substack money just yet.

Since before the word influencer existed, I think I knew I wanted to be one. When I was in high school, I was Myspace friends with this moody, gorgeous emo girl with black hair and giant green eyes. She had thousands of friends and posted selfies in her bra and blogs detailing her underage binge-drinking nights out in rural Wisconsin. I was in awe of her and couldn’t believe that someone could post so freely about their life for thousands of people to see.

Inspired by the Midwest vixen, I briefly blogged about my breakup from my first “real” boyfriend, but deleted the blog and stopped posting altogether after he sarcastically commented “kudos”. God, I would pay any amount of money to recover my old Myspace account.

At nineteen, I became obsessed with makeup tutorials on YouTube. Does anyone remember the Makeup Geek channel? It was the OG beauty channel before beauty content was a thing. Marlena Stell doesn’t get the credit she deserves. I became obsessed with Makeup Geek around 2009, and a year later, I started my own beauty blog (you can still read it here). I’ve always loved sharing and connecting on social media, especially once I learned that you can make a living doing so.

KPrettyBeauty: a girl trying to figure things out, one lipstick at a time. C’mon, I was so cute.

My dreams of being a beauty blogger were immediately crushed once I went to makeup school. Back then, the only “real” makeup artists were the ones working in TV and fashion. The idea that someone could make a living doing their own makeup on camera was unheard of. I’d probably have a mansion in Beverly Hills by now if it weren’t for my pretentious MUD instructors who scoffed when I talked about all the cool techniques and products I’d learned about online.

Anyway!! I’ve been back on the content creation horse now since 2018, and it’s been a humiliation ritual to say the least. I’ve had many different niches and even dabbled in the coaching industry. I’ve gone through the full range of experiences and emotions from going mega-viral and being a guest on podcasts, to absolute crickets and no views. I’ve been called fat and had my teeth made fun of more times than I can count. I’ve had weeks where I posted daily and consecutive months when I ghosted the internet. I’ve changed my usernames like six times and wiped my Instagram feed more times than I can count.

I’m ashamed to admit there were times in this journey when I compromised my integrity out of financial desperation. Not to the level of FYRE festival or Caroline Calloway scammer antics (I’m a Calloway apologist, though, sorry), but I posted content and sold a lot of things I thought I should rather than what was really on my heart.

I thought that for people to take me seriously, they couldn’t think I wanted to be an iNfLuEnCeR. I needed to have a product or service to sell, wisdom to share, and a presence of all-knowing authority.

I loved talking about relationships and dating, so I took a course to become a certified dating coach and started selling coaching packages. When that stopped feeling right, I discovered Human Design and became a certified Human Design reader. I loooove Human Design, it’s changed my life. But it didn’t take long before I realized that doing it professionally wasn’t what I wanted either.

I’ve spent too much time playing the career version of Goldilocks and the Three Bears, trying on different things, seeing which one fits. And none of them fit because when you’re lying to yourself, you will fail. Maybe not right away, but it’s unsustainable to live in chronic untruths.

I don’t want to be a coach or a guru. I don’t want to sell e-books or do high-ticket affiliate marketing. I love freelancing, but I don’t want to do it forever. And most importantly, the one that triggers well-meaning people: I DON’T WANT TO HAVE A TRADITIONAL JOB. I refuse to have a traditional job. I rebuke having a traditional job. A stale job. A job that keeps me tied to a desk and lets me know when I can take a vacation. A job that tells me I can’t have pink hair or a face tattoo or post dick jokes online. A job where I can get laid off after talking ad nauseam about KPIs on 2-hour-long Teams calls. I simply refuse.

I want to be paid to exist. To create. To write. To overshare. And I don’t care who makes fun of me for it. Some people sell their fucking farts in a jar and make millions. Believe me, there’s a world where I get paid to exist online.

I don’t care if you think it’s delusional. I will succeed because I’m delusional.

I don’t care if you think it’s impractical. I will succeed because I’m impractical.

I’m a Sagittarius, babe. Miss me with your 5-year plan, your budgets, and your PTO. I’ve been known to take risks and burn my life to the ground to live the life I want. Maybe I won’t ever get there, but it will kill me if I don’t at least try.

I can’t help but laugh as I read this back. Do I sound like Timothée Chalamet, “I want to be one of the greats,” but instead of going for an Oscar I just want to have a bestselling Substack about nothing? Maybe. But why is it only acceptable to become a successful creator, influencer, or blogger if you accidentally stumbled your way into it? The romanticized version of the story is “I was just doing this for fun, and it went viral.”

I was out to lunch with two friends recently and admitted to them, “I post videos online because I like it, but I’m not just doing this for my health.” It felt good to say out loud.

I’m not just doing this for fun.

There’s a lot of money to be made online, and I want a piece of the pie, bitch.

If you’d like to partake in my daily humiliation rituals, you can follow me on Instagram and TikTok.