Trauma for Sale, Part 1
Side hustles are no longer optional.
Everybody has multiple sources of income, and they aren’t adding up for the vast majority of us.
Years ago, I wrote that the gig economy is more like a scam economy, and we, the poor and desperate, are the ones getting scammed. Uber is one of the most well-known examples, defining its drivers as third-party contractors to avoid having to pay or treat them like employees.
But it’s not just Uber anymore. Every day, we are subjected to the influence of gigantic companies exploiting their workers.
It’s in entertainment, from music to movies to TV shows. Subscribe to pay for 1,000 options so you can dig for something worth watching or listening to. It's well-known at this point that thanks to Spotify, musicians get paid in fractions of pennies. Musicians have been demanding more payment for years, and Spotify pays less and makes more each year.
It’s not just entertainment, though – it’s every part of the budget. Housing costs are bleeding us dry. Food prices are skyrocketing, with no end in sight. I know Bill Gates doesn’t know how much food costs, but I think even he would raise his eyebrows at some of these prices now.
If you want to survive, you need more than a job. You have to turn your hobbies, your resources, and your life story into some way to make ends (almost) meet. The people who make the most money are profiting while the rest of us do the work. They are taking advantage of our desperation.
It’s worse for those of us who are disabled, because we can’t force our bodies to match the energy of our able-bodied peers.
I’ve learned the hard way that you can only sell your own emotional devastation for so long. At first, my writing was a way to escape and get my thoughts out. As I questioned the world of my upbringing, my writing was fueled with rage and passion. It burned big and bright for years before I found myself poisoned from too much smoke.
Writing became a torturous task as I tried to unpack my trauma. I thought at first that telling my stories would provide catharsis and create hope, help, and understanding for myself and others.
It turns out that trying to revisit, retell, and rehash trauma makes it worse.
I read many books about mental health and many memoirs to try and inform myself about the book I wanted to write. Instead of giving me an idea of what to do, I learned that what I wanted to write might not be a memoir at all.
Each time I tried to open those wounds and display them in my words, I would be triggered for days. For a while, I wasn’t even sure if writing itself was an occupation I still wanted to pursue.
I know I’m not the only one. The Internet is owned and operated by very big companies that have no qualms about using our own data against us. Creators and consumers are both losing, because the corporations don’t create. They exist to own and manage the platforms, but they don’t make the content on them. They don’t even make the ads. They sell ad space to smaller companies.
The relationship between creator burnout and distrust in content consistency is deeply intertwined. So many YouTube channels are abandoned now, and their creators have gone offline. Some announced their departure, while others simply vanished.
Why would you trust someone who says they’re going to create things and they just disappear?
I’m sure there are plenty of people who think these patterns are just creators getting lazy or something. They make enough money to retire, and then they jump ship. But burnout is very real, and the people who continuously create are in the minority. I can think of a few creators I followed ten to fifteen years ago that I still follow, but there are dozens more who stopped creating.
As for me, I took a longer break than I anticipated between November 2024 and October 2025. I had to stop writing altogether for months. Then I slowly started journaling, just for myself. I had to unlearn the habit of turning all my thoughts into thinkpieces. When I started writing again, it took months for me to feel ready to start sharing posts online again.
Now I’m trying to rebuild, but my income took a serious hit. Even before I finally stopped posting, my post frequency was dwindling. I had to choose between money and my mental health. We talk about “mental health” like it’s some kind of abstract thing, but I want to clarify that if you don’t take care of your brain, it will destroy your entire life.
This was a difficult choice, but I might not be here today if I hadn’t taken a step back to evaluate how my writing was destroying me.
This blog relaunch is specifically designed to minimize fees. If you're interested in helping me get back to writing more consistently, please subscribe. It's free, and helping me out is optional. Any one-time or recurring payments are processed through Stripe, one of the least expensive payment processors. I'm trying to get away from platforms that take a larger portion of my income, like Substack and Patreon.
Either way, I deeply appreciate you taking the time to read my thoughts. Your attention is so valuable, and it means a great deal to me.