When I was fired last November—let’s not put a pretty name on it. They just don’t use that term because of the semantics of it all, lawsuits, etc. Laid off, restructured, what have you—I was enraged. It was humiliating in a way the job loss in 2023 could never be.
Three years ago, I had the bad luck to be caught without a life jacket on the Titanic. Thankfully, my husband was waiting not just with a door to stow away on, but with a fully operational lifeboat.
But this past November, all the platitudes were almost worse than an honest reason, the job equivalent of letting a person down easy.
Underneath my self-deprecating humour beats a prideful heart. If there’s a deadly sin I’m going down for, that’s the one. Like I gave a single dog’s turd of a crap whether my ex-employer liked me as a person after I ceased to work for them, or whether they thought my work was good enough. Obviously not, otherwise I’d still be employed, no?
Probably the worst insult you could deliver to a person like me was one that belittled my intelligence.
As I write, I recognize the scar is still tender, a spot I worry with my tongue, unable to just leave it alone whenever my thoughts wander.
Despite the statements above, this is not, in fact, a hate write but instead an inquiry of sorts.
If you had asked me a year ago what I would be doing now, I’m sure building a publication celebrating Canadian culture and curiosity wouldn’t have entered the conversation.
After the incident—or perhaps the Big Bang in my particular universe—I wanted to build something. But what?
I was firmly in the “fool me twice” category, analytics-wise and, as I am continually reminded whenever I peruse job postings, they serve more as reminders of what I don’t want. Don’t tell my family, please.
If I could science, perhaps the Heisenberg path would have appeal, but dying alone in the woods seems like a lot to sacrifice for ego. Even my prideful nature has a streak of pragmatism. Nor do I think my nervous system could tolerate flirting with the law. Admit it, we all finish the line.
“I fought the law…
And the law won.”
I dug deeply into my repressed memories of career counselling and came up with two questions: What am I good at, and what do I like to do?
Having completely forgotten a lifelong penchant for writing, I was determined that my destiny lay in the fibre arts, perhaps as a crochet pattern investigator exposing the snake oil pattern generators taking advantage of those of us who collect impossible amounts of yarn, buy patterns promising beautiful handcrafted objects, then abandon them because we lost count—or, more accurately, interest—or because we spotted the next shiny, dopamine-promising craft project.
More than that, though, I wanted to bring makers together somehow.
On a recent shopping trip I muttered under my breath, just noticing the newly opened Makers in Upper Canada Mall. A consortium of makers—yes, just like the name—who had come together to hawk their wares Three Musketeers style.
This plan was inherently flawed. Not that Makers isn’t a fabulous idea—it is, and it’s a place where I’m sure I could empty my wallet at a disturbingly rapid pace—but as much as I like crochet, and I do, I wouldn’t call it a passion. To create something at the scale I imagined required more than a lukewarm interest.
Around now, the haters are commenting, “But you forgot about writing, Amanda.”
To which I say, “Shush now and listen. I’ll get there.”
Still determined that my salvation lay in the truly disturbing amount of yarn I had amassed, I attacked the idea of building a yarn golem, as I assume all modern fibre artists do: with YouTube, AI, WordPress, and a dream.
Building a website that satisfied my ever-evolving chameleon vision proved challenging, to say the least. Yet as I watched, noted, and prompted, I was plagued by the thought that somewhere there must be a manual for this.
Turns out there isn’t.
And while I’m sure I’ll regret it someday, I’m not writing one either.
Instead of documenting the step-by-step process of setting up a block-based site, I would spin my tires for three or four hours, get frustrated, and stomp off muttering about how much easier this was in 2013.
Self-soothing took the form of YouTube, where I observed unnaturally happy talking heads discussing—with the air of someone sharing a super-special secret—the mistakes they’d avoid if they were starting today instead of a year ago, two years ago, or five.
I tried to keep my inner skeptic from seizing the wheel for approximately twelve weeks.
Even the Crochet Business School podcast couldn’t save Phoenix and Purl. Or was it The Maker Index?
No matter.
I had been ignoring the as-yet-unnamed phenomenon for weeks, perhaps even years, when instead of reading my friend’s book—I honestly intended to, but I don’t think even she believes me anymore—I started to write something that had absolutely nothing to do with craft.
Not even in my trademark “back into it and jump-scare you with an aha moment when you think we’re having a lovely conversation about the explosive properties of mercury” kind of way.
An expert in my own self-delusions, it was my best friend who recommended Brian Henry—and not for the first time. Perhaps by coincidence, or perhaps the Divine, there was a Personal Stories class starting in just a couple of weeks.
Finally, an expert who could weigh in on the solitaire-esque game of career hot-and-cold I was playing.
I signed up.
I’d spent months asking YouTube, AI, podcasts, and my own overactive brain what I should build. Eventually, it was someone who had spent decades helping writers discover what they were already capable of who, if not giving me the answer, showed me how to find it for myself.
The prompt at the end of each class was deceptively simple.
Write.
About the topic of the day if you wanted. Another from a list, if the first didn’t appeal. Or whatever you wanted if the first two were a bust.
If I was still turning cards in career hot-and-cold, I was definitely on the warmer side of the scale, if not exactly hot.
Fiction?
Cold.
Ice cold.
Writing?
Warmer.
Nonfiction?
Warmer still.
Current events?
Cooling off again.
Memoir…
Not quite.
There was no shortage of words.
The evidence was building that perhaps I was a writer, even if I remained convinced the other shoe was waiting to drop.
Willing to play along for now, I started doing writerly things.
I started a Substack that thirty of my closest friends subscribed to. The place appeared to be populated by no shortage of writers, though readers seemed somewhat harder to find.
The next step in the typical literary journey, I assumed, was finding an audience. Not that mine was typical by any means, unless you counted the hodgepodge of false starts, twists, and turns that had led me to this point.
I could wait for the “undomesticated reader” to find me, or I could venture into the wild in search of them.
The only question remaining was: where?