What Rock Bottom Taught Me
By: Jael R. Bakari
Tags: Writing, Journey, Money, Storytelling, Creativity

What Rock Bottom Taught Me

I hit a low point last week.

With approximately $0.37 in my account, plus rent and a number of other utilities due now; one could say I was in a bit of a bind. More like a gaping chasm of a bind.

You see my husband and I are creatives, and before you pull out the world’s smallest violin to play an accompaniment, I’m asking you to hear me out first.

We are not fairy dust and unicorn idealists who have chosen to forego the creature comforts of the world to live a more “spiritual” and “enlightened” lifestyle. Nor are we completely terrible planners with no insight or plan.

We had a plan. It just failed. Miserably.

You see, in 2019, after the loss of my mother and all our personal belongings in a house-fire, I got a promotion at work.

And I know you’re thinking:

“Oh wow Jael, that was a blessing.”

I thought so too.

Until I got into the role, and it was the equivalent of trying to mop the ocean with a toy Swiffer.

The job itself wasn’t difficult. But the amount of work required of me, coupled with the low pay, overall “go get ’em tiger” attitude of my department higher-ups, and the incomplete mourning process accompanying the speed with which I handled one of the most traumatic moments of my life, was extremely difficult.

Needless to say, I cracked under the pressure of it all.

I confessed this to my then supervisor, who was very understanding at the time and ensured I took advantage of the company’s resources to get the help I needed; which I did. However in an annual review shortly after I was told I needed to be “more resilient”, to which my response was “F*ck this noise, y’all don’t pay me enough to do this sh*t. I quit!”.

*In my former manager’s defense, I was having tech issues at my new location, which is a big deal when you work remotely. And I couldn’t find a 2nd location because I didn’t have family or friends with quiet locations I could work from in the state I currently reside in. So they weren’t wrong for saying it, it was just tone deaf as f*ck.

But the funny thing was I had been considering the move for a while anyway. Working in a high volume call center for 4 years had wrecked my health, both mentally and physically. The manager’s comment was just the final proverbial straw that sent me over the edge.

When I quit, I pulled all my savings from every stashed place I had, and was fortunate enough to squeeze a small inheritance out of my mom’s debt-riddled estate that was enough to cover a year-long sabbatical. Plus my hubby was working as a barber at the time, so any other miscellaneous expenses could be covered down by him as we discussed. I left with some cushion underneath us with the intention of taking the time to pursue my writing, as well as doing the hard work of healing from the loss of my mother.

We did what any other creatives would do when given an inheritance and access to savings: we spent the money on living essentials and investing in our respective crafts. I took creative writing courses and bought craft books. My husband took engineering, music theory, sound design, and production classes. We spent money on getting his mixes for his album together and putting me into a position where I would be able to get a traditional publishing deal, or at least bring in some income with my writing.

You know, they say if you want to make God laugh you should tell ’em your plans and I guess ours were f*cking hilarious because enter 2020. The barbering income all but dried up, and we were able to grab some PUA for him but that didn’t last long either.

On the upside, everything we set out to accomplish was done. I was able to write not one, but two books, a sh*t ton of articles, become googleable, release an e-book, and make contact with a major literary agent at a speculative fiction conference (shout out to FIYAHCON for being the best thing since toilet paper). The downside was that my draft still wasn’t queryable since it was missing some fine tuning, but my eye had evolved to the point where I could readily recognize the problems in it now; thanks to some freelance editing I did for members of my writing group. All of which was great but produced no money.

As for my husband, he learned how to produce and engineer music, worked on his vocal production, and was able to drop a single and entire album ( a lifelong dream) on his birthday, complete with a release performance at our local bar and grill. But an emerging artist is up against a lot of competition, especially an artist in their 30’s, and needless to say his music is great but we needed more publicity for him. We got him out there but again, no money produced because these things take time.

So on November 30th when we ran out of funds it was like “Crap, we got all this momentum but no money. What do we do now?”

We talked about it and decided to do what any self-respecting adult with three children would: we started job hunting and we hosted a fundraiser. Thankfully, we had some folks contribute and were able to raise enough funds to tie us over for the month, but again income is a priority and neither of us are getting any hits on this job thing. Plus the fundraiser opened up a can of questioning worms that technically I couldn’t defend against because I was asking for money so that meant my choices were automatically up for evaluation.

*Sidebar: this experience has further confirmed my liberalism not because I’m suddenly some communist hippie, but because I realize that if we leave it entirely to people to fund social programs, a lot of folks will be up sh*t’s creek without a paddle should hard times ever befall them. And this is coming from social psychological research as well as my own personal experience.

But the beautiful thing about storms is they provide clarity and rejuvenation once everything settles down. I was incredibly irritated at the start of this month, because I spent years fixing my credit and getting my sh*t together only for it to fall apart on me again. However, it did force me to evaluate myself. Not so much my choices, but rather why I was making them. I asked myself some critical questions and took a hard look at myself and what I’ve demonstrated consistently in my 31 years of living.

I wrote down my values, who I was, what was important to me, what my mission in life was and how I wanted to go about achieving that objective. And for the first time I was able to answer those questions with minimal hesitation and with very clear and succinct answers. I wasn’t just some airy-fairy-idealist with far off goals; I was now a battle-seasoned general who had been through the sh*ts and knew what would work for me vs. what wouldn’t. More importantly, I began to light up the darkness I was in and know the steps between here and my very, very big end goal (I’ll share it as I get closer to it, I’m reasonably superstitious at this point).

Out of this rock bottom was born my why and my brand which I am happy to share with you in the images below. I’m not out of the woods yet, but I’ve bought myself some time and I’ve turned myself into a bonafide professional with my new branding logo, font and color palette, and some great perspective shifting insights I gained from a course I took with Avocado Social and General Assembly.

Now for my next challenge, time to use what I know to get organized, get some income, and hopefully published traditionally.

Wish me luck!