I Quit.
I've been quiet the last few months. Here's what's been going on.
Last December, with the Chicago L train rumbling overhead, my sister and I sat in her car in front of the Orange line station before I caught my flight back to LA.
She was worried about me, even though she didn’t say it directly. Sisters just know these things… I don’t make the rules.
I — of course— was still pledging allegiance to My Dream while holding back tears and gritting my teeth. But, as I told her blearily how “okay I was! Really!” I knew I wasn’t fooling anyone.
I was deeply unhappy. Things weren’t going well.
The problem is that on the outside, I was making moves!
Imagine people DMing you that they want what you have, and you’re playing the shell game to find your rent money every month.
Subscribers were pouring in and my business partner and I had finished a book proposal. We had literary agents from one of the Top Talent Agencies™! We had a top podcast and were putting out our most successful products to date.
It wasn’t hard to convince myself that this was going to work.
And yet— with enormous gratitude for everything we created in our business— it became harder to ignore the feeling that I was bumping my head against the ceiling. Like, I am a balloon filled with 100% pure and increasingly-rare helium that would float all the way up to the moon and stars if she could. So I opened a window and let myself out.
This week, we announced the closure of Internet People, the business I started on a wing and prayer and divine inspiration in 2021.
This information has felt like holding a thousand bees in my mouth for a couple of months.
For a long time, closing my business, failing in front of everyone and going back to work for someone else was the worst case scenario.
What would it mean about me? What would everyone think? What the hell would I even do if I wasn’t doing this?
As an entrepreneur, I think there’s a wiggly little part of your brain that’s always playing out this dark fantasy, but I genuinely didn’t think it would happen to me. Not at 38! I’m supposed to be in my prime, honey.
I thought this whole thing would be completely humiliating, like forgetting the words to my solo while standing on stage, realizing I’m only wearing a thong.
But what I feel is nothing like that.
I feel relief.
I feel complete peace.
A few months ago, I heard Reese Witherspoon speaking with the NYT podcast about her process of optioning books into movies for her production company.
