I’ll be 30 this year. Can you believe it? I’m still occasionally asked if I’m old enough to throw trash away into the cardboard compactor at work. 😅 I take Solara shopping with me and earn the minimum of one double-take, like, She has a child??

I’ll get to turning 30 later, late March. I don’t think of it as a Big Deal with a capital B-D, but I will be celebrating my birthday this year as I want to.

Last year sucked worse than a flat plastic straw.

I don’t have long-term life plans for this year, beyond moving into my first apartment and finding work/life blend — even if that means I need a different job…which just so happens to be one of things I want to discuss with you.

Blogger ➡️ Content Creator

I’m changing my Blogger title to Content Creator. I don’t just blog, and I don’t just want to create blog posts. I want to create things across several mediums. I want to create content in across various mediums.

Most of all, though, I want to create a career out of this. I want the power to define what work means for me. I want the power/privilege/ability to decide what I do for work, as work, and to create an actual work/life blend that works for me.

And hey, maybe I’m dreaming. Maybe I’m high in the clouds and still living in a fantasy land like my abuser always claimed me to be. Family thinks I’m crazy, that I’m not living in reality, but I just want better than the traditional options available to me. I’m not a traditional gal. I’m gay. That’s not what I mean.

What I mean is, I don’t want to level up in the corporate line and continue to be a boss in someone else’s dream. I want to be the boss in my own dream. I want the power to build my own team, without having to consider corporate bullshit. I want the power to tell my story through whatever medium I set my mind to, or some other story simmering in my head, anytime I want — not within the constraints of a 9-5 or 7-4 or 10-7. I want the power to create my own schedule.

Working for someone else, especially during a pandemic, where your job requires you to leave your house? It’s not stable. This mystical stability shit I’ve been fed all my life about working for the man is all a lie — and it’s never leading up to working for the woman.

And autistic people? We may become someone’s sub-boss, but how often do we gain the power — the autonomy — to completely create a life we could live to the fullest without having to adhere to societal standards and corporate guidelines?

I just feel like I’m meant to do more. I have felt it in my bones for as long as I can remember, and being in the element of a blogger/influencer/content creator is what I feel like I’m supposed to be doing. I feel like I’m truly myself, not pretending to be someone whose soul isn’t being sucked away by customers who think the global pandemic is a left-wing conspiracy.

Apparel is my retail love, in terms of working for someone else, but I loathe fast fashion and the insane amount of plastic we go through. I genuinely don’t want to move up to a management position for any reason beyond the monetary aspect.

And making work all about money — only doing it for the money — grosses me out. I feel dirty.

I want to enhance people’s lives for the better through what I put forth in the world. I have my faults, but I never claimed perfection. I’m not asking to be a role model. I just want to do something more meaningful than encouraging people to feed fast fashion and faux sustainability.

I need a career that blends seamlessly into my life, rather than one that interrupts and tries to pause it for the sake of making money so I can live my life in the approximately 72 hours per 40-hour work week I have to live it.

The math:
168hrs/week – (40 work hours + [~8 hours sleep × 7 days per week])
168 – (40 + 56)
168 – 90
72

That’s three days, per week, you get to do with what you want — like how you spend the time before/after work, mostly.

Stack onto that America’s toxic work culture involving the hustle/hard work, and it’s just….stressful.

I don’t want that for myself. Who said it had to be stressful? Who decided who could start their own biz and who couldn’t? Who decided who could be successful and who had to forever work for someone else? Who decided all this bullshit? Why does it have to be an elite club you have to join in order to set out on your own, to create something for yourself that you can turn into a career? Why do people feel the need to stress that you will fail, to constantly remind you they don’t fully support you because they know you will fail, based on how hard they failed?

Like, it’s all crap.

That’s where I’m heading in my online goings-on journey thing. Whatever you want to call it. Everything sounds cheesy. Blogger is inaccurate long-term. Entrepreneur is much too general. Content creator is more satisfactory because it covers content creation, at the same time not giving in to generalization.

What this will look like

• I’m leveling my project load. I’ve a list of what I’m working on now and what I’ll work on later, if I’m still interested. “Later” projects redirect here, or just don’t exist online anywhere yet, so no resources are wasted.
• The content I create & share will be more concentrated on certain topics, namely those which pertain to my life currently — moving into my first apartment, meal prepping as a spoonie and so I don’t forget I have produce until it spoils, organizing my fridge/pantry, creating work/life blend, living life “normally” despite my upbringing — and those which generally interest me — reusable menstrual products, adulting, etc.
• I stand by my statements regarding goals, but each of my posts will fall into at least one of the following three main reasons people read blogs:
  1. to learn something
  2. to be inspired
  3. to relate
• I have to get serious about email. 😅 I’ve been poring over issues of newsletters I love — I can count them all on one hand — because I don’t want to create one of my own that I would hate reading.
• I’m going to take social media more seriously. I’ve been playing around in Canva and found that it’s even got stuff for me — for my style — and that opens up so many new content ideas and possibilities.
• My blogging voice is sure to change, as I’ve learned how to better infuse my writing and content creations with who I am.

Jane Out Loud

I’ve been writing a 12-part series about the parts of myself I’ve hidden from almost everyone. It’s highly personal and discusses identity, mental health, sexuality, style, and more. The idea of sharing this part of my story terrifies me, but I think it important in the long run.

Perspectives you have about me might change, but I’ve realized keeping it all in in the long run is what harms me most. I’ll survive if people decide they cannot continue relationships with me because of something they’ve read. My story is not for the faint of heart, but also will probably not contain as many juicy details as you want it to.

It’s not for family or friends or anyone in particular, but rather those with an open mind and willingness to listen instead of correcting me where I’m “wrong”. My story is told in my perspective, containing as little or as much detail as I so please, and written with the aid of previous writings (journals, poetry, lyrics, prose).

Release date is January 26, 2021. 🙃

Other misc. things

• I’m keen to redefine my personal brand, which encompasses me everywhere. I think it’s harder offline, in non-creative settings powered by corporate lines that would rather have programmable droids than humans, but will settle for creating mindless minions out of them anyway.
  • P.S. Janepedia will go through a rebrand this year, which means new year, new theme. ✌️
• Expect posts related to living independently/alone, because I don’t many stories about actually autistic adults by actually autistic adults, nor do I see non-inspiration porn about formerly infantilized people FINALLY living alone. I’m also in a nesting mood, I suppose, and keen to organize all the things for a clutter-free apartment. I like to know the why of things, but also the how — and especially how other people do things. A lifestyle blog can handle that, though, and my blog grows with me. It’s called Janepedia, after all.
• I’m going to keep “bein’ real”, or whatever this is, during my “intermission”. I think I got caught up in the need for everything to be polished before I published it, but the problem with this concept is that it doesn’t work me. So I’m going share the baskets of unfolded clean laundry and pile of dirty laundry, the dead plants, and the bad hair days if there are any at the time that I feel like it. I really want to do a time-lapse video of me cleaning a room to share my process and be more relatable. I love watching those, especially from the TikTokers or YouTubers who give off this feel that their lives are otherwise super together and never messy. But life is messy, and I’m realizing your life can be together and still have messes in it. Also, just because I’m finally moving into my own apartment, it doesn’t mean I’m not autistic anymore — that’s really what I’m keen to illustrate.
• I’m partaking in the Book Blog Discussion Challenge again.
• I’m not moving in without existing problems, but I’ll chronicle my journey via my blog and social channels.