On Working for Another

and the Clarity I was missing

For a long time, something has been gnawing at me.

I wanted to have a business, wanted it so bad. It felt cool! Fun! Freedom! Specifically, I wanted to generate income outside of anything my husband was building. I really believed that my drive to bring my insights to the world was a mission I was sold on alone. I mean, if they are my insights, shouldn’t they live under my own brand and name?

I experimented — a lot — trying to figure out what that thing was. Plenty of things didn’t fit, plenty of money was spent in the process, and honestly looking back I would have been so much more effective if I had figured out myself first before attempting to make it about prosperity.

What I didn’t realize until recently is that I was working inside a false binary. Either I build my own thing, or I don’t work at all. I had completely overlooked the option that most people in the world choose, and that I think deserves a lot more dignity than we give it: working for someone else’s mission because you genuinely love it.

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The clarity came from an old fashioned “time away from my computer.” My mother-in-law was visiting for two weeks, my husband was deep in work projects, and I found myself with that particular spring-cleaning energy that just screams recalibration. I stepped back from being online. I stopped consuming. I read books, did the mom things, the life things, and just...

let myself be.

I started to see how much of what I thought I wanted was actually a should. I deepened into my own desires, and realized how much the trap of performance had influenced how I was styling my creation online. When I got quiet enough to hear myself, the desire underneath all of it was simpler: I just wanted to work. To contribute to something I cared about, something I felt brought my uniqueness to the world.

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My husband had always thought something like admin or support work would be beneath me — beneath anyone, really, in the sense that we’re all capable of more. For a while I believed it too, until I started to see the value of support, and how supporting someone does not take away from your own innate creative capacity, uniqueness, or personal mission.

Sure, creating for someone else can be taxing. I’ve found that creating for a mission I love, alongside my own personal inspired creation, to be the best combo.

The people who brought great things into the world rarely did it alone. Behind most of them were other people who were deeply devoted and genuinely skilled. I’d like to believe these people had honor that led them to wanting to further a cause, an idea, a belief system.

We need those people. There’s real dignity in that choice, and I think a lot of the “escape corporate” energy we see right now isn’t really about rejecting work — it’s about rejecting misaligned mission. When the mission fits, people show up.

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What I realized is that my husband’s creative pursuits are genuinely something I’m lit up by. And for the first time, instead of feeling like supporting that would mean shrinking myself, it felt like an expansion.

I’d been afraid that leaning into his work would mean encouraging him to be away more, to be less present with our family. I finally saw clearly: maybe there isn’t room for some of the things I thought I wanted, because what I actually want is already here.