2024: The Year The Void Ate Me + Vomited My Creations
12/22/2024
I once had a life, or rather
Life had me
I was one among many
Or at least I seemed to be
Well, I read an old quotation in a book just yesterday
Said, "gonna reap just what you sow
The debts you make you have to pay"
Can you get to that?
-”Can You Get To That” By Funkadelic
Great song btw.
As the year comes to a screeching halt, my head is spinning from the whiplash and I'm tired of ruminating in my familiar void. This year marked many new beginnings as well as revisiting old creative ideas because I had nothing but time. Learning how to leverage my newly found freedom and actually trying my ideas, no matter how weird or random. 2024 got kickstarted when I got fired for the first time from a job that honestly altered my brain chemistry and how I view a 9-5. If it wasn't for all of the young and rich influencers on my timeline telling me working a 9 to 5 was lame, the horrible management, consistent under staffing, and my literal cancerous coworkers, i would have and should have quit months, nay weeks into the job but I am not mad anymore. Divine rejection redirected me into hustle culture or should i say catapulted me into a year full of trial and error. If the song lyrics at the beginning weren't foreshadowing enough, I will make a blatant preface and say 2024 was my year of karmic retribution for the slime I dealt in 2023. At least it felt that way. For the astrology freaks, this was my 12th house Profection year, which is a notably dark, hermetic, and introspective year and it felt extra rough because Saturn was transiting my fourth house of home, family, and private relationships.
In 2024, I was in the house. Unemployed, living off of savings, trying random side hustles. It was cool for a while when I was in deep creation mode. I started the year with my first love, painting. I had been craving it while working at the job that I didn't like and finally had time to really devote myself. I used it to alchemize the pain of rejection and the overall hurt I felt at the time. I felt like I had finally taken the training wheels off,lost control, toppled over, and gotten my first big boo boo in the real working world. I cried and went home to my mama. I have no shame. To heal, I painted and created art and ended up making an etsy shop… it flopped. I had dreams of selling original paintings, prints and stickers. I announced it on my tiny socials and a few solid friends and family members purchased. It was a fun trial run but not worth the effort. Funny story, when I finally got an interview – my first and only interview of 2024 – for my local gas station. I mentioned my etsy shop as some recent work I had been up to. The interviewer looked up my shop on the spot and all that came up were drop shipping floral shops. Mortified and embarrassed, I moved on from etsy.
During this time I was still actively applying and looking for work. I was also volunteering at my local art museum and putting together a tattoo portfolio. Try my luck. I thought I even landed a serious work from home gig that I ditched volunteering and the tattoo shop search for but it ended up being a scam 🫨 To make a month long story short, I got recruited, onboarded, and trained for an WFH online warehouse associate job and i ended up being the cog in a scammers fucked up machine. All for the promise of $3,000 at the end of the month,that obviously never came. I ended up reporting them to the FBI, and absolutely rued the day I ever received an email from them.
My next great idea struck me while watching a Youtube Ad. “Make Passive Income with Amazon Royalties”. Curious, I clicked and was introduced to the world of online book publishing – specifically, Amazon Kindle Publishing.The ad was for a man selling an AI book writing service but I wasn't interested. Ai writing a book? That's actually ludacris. No, I was interested in the idea of choosing a topic to write about, finding a ghostwriting service, and publishing it for royalties. After researching further I found a stat that reported that 50 to 80% of books that have been published are ghostwritten. That was enough to convince me to look into it further. It was a situation where everyone else was doing it and making a bag, so I wanted to do it too and I did. That night I began researching different services, price comparing. At this point I still had some savings cushion but I was getting desperate. At this moment the thought of going back to a traditional 9 to 5 was out of the question. I was traumatized and burnt out. I chose to hustle because I'm young, creative, and worth the effort. I was tired of spending my money on things that only added clutter to my life (buying food) and didn't progress me forward (paying debt). So, I tried it as a last stitch effort, to use my money, invest it in a passion project, and end things with a bang. While researching, i got a phone call and i usually don't answer phone calls. I was especially hesitant because I didnt want to mess up my new work from home gig eye roll. However, this all occurred during the Aries Solar Eclipse transiting my 5th house of art,creativity, and sex, so caution was nowhere to be seen. I answer the phone and a friendly man responds on the other end saying he saw my submission on their website to write an astrology book. We discuss and I hang up the phone and my body is vibrating with excitement. My mom comes home not long after the phone call and I can't contain myself. I say, “mom, I think I just got a book deal.” We discussed it and the next day I was signing a contract to write a book about astrology. “Astrology Unveiled By Ryan Foxx” was published not long to long after that. After completing the book, I realized I kind of enjoy getting my ideas down on a page outside of my morning journal. I've never viewed myself as a writer because I never got great grades in English class. However, I have the urge to bombastically talk my shit about a variety of topics but, visual/audio mediums make me uncomfortable, to say the least. I'm not ugly and I'm not against the idea but if i did i would really have to wrestle with my fear of being seen/perceived. That's a topic for another day though. In reflection of this moment, I'm proud of myself for publishing a book but, in the future I would like to take a slower and more thoughtful approach to the undertaking. More funding was needed for the project and I was at the end of my rope. I couldn't afford to properly market it. I got decent first month sales just with my parents bragging about me but other than that not much.
After the book was done, my pockets were empty. Unfortunately for me, freedom is so much sweeter than a paycheck. Around the time I was reporting the scammers to the FBI (alot of these events overlap so forgive the timeline discrepancies). My mom needed help cleaning out her closet. She had become so overwhelmed by the sheer amount of clothing and needed to purge some items. Specifically 3- 5 trash bags stuffed full with nice, lightly used clothes ready to be donated to the local thrift. At the time I was vexed and full of spite. I told my mom, “I'm gonna sell your clothes on Poshmark.” I saw an opportunity and I pounced on it. I took those clothes and learned how to make nice listings, take good photographs, create an inventory system, and some spreadsheets to keep me organized. I expanded to Ebay and Depop and ended up ditching Poshmark due to an unsavory review. I sold the clothes out of my closet, my sister's closet, my moms. I even tried thrifting but felt a little scummy about it. I tried this for the rest of the year, 6 months total. I made my first $1,000 and now I'm ready to quit. The hardest $1000 I've tried to scrape together. However, it saved me when the debt collectors started to call and it still helps me pay the bills.
I recollect my years worth of flops for you all to bring some personal catharsis and also hopefully provide a relatable tale on trying to survive this late stage capitalist hellscape we all find ourselves in. Being a young creative artist, living with my mom, absolutely in my flop era watching other people my age on social media seemingly living the dream and then turning around saying there just showing the highlights. My highlights this year were far from picture perfect and definitely not instagrammable . Despite my moaning and groaning, I learned how to romanticize my life a little bit more. Finding gratitude for all of the overflowing love and support from my inner circle. The pure delight I experience on a sunny day, smoking a joint, cloud gazing is unmatched. I realized my boyfriend is truly my person no matter what happens. My dogs are my closest and best companions and I started learning how to read tarot this year because the future is a little scary sometimes and I found that it helps with my anxiety.
I feel like I ended the year worse than how I started financially but mentally I'm better-ish. Hell, I started this year with stretched ear lobes and now I'm wearing tiny huggie silver hoops. Things change and sometimes its not for better or worse, it's just different from what we already know. Reminding myself that all of the loss gives way for so much room for newness to come in. Also that newness isn’t always big,scary and bad, if it is I'm stronger and more resourceful now to handle the big, scary, and bad. I believe in myself now. Now i truly understand the value of money and that the number in my bank account does NOT equate to my worth as a human being. Its merely a means to an end, it always has been. Knowing what i can do with little inspires me for what ill be able to do with a little bit more. I can't wait to see what else I create in the future.Prayerfully, a steady income job that i don't hate <3
2026 Update: Manifested and claimed a steady income job that i don’t hate! Deleted the book<3 (Consider them “Special Editions”) I’m probably an ADHD baddie and that’s OK!
