Fortune Favors The Freelancer
2024 was fragile. And it was up to me to make it last.
Over the course of 3 misfortunate weeks, I found myself with no job, no savings, and thus not much else to do. The absence of everything, when you're used to being at the epicenter of so much, felt deafening. I had nothing more to my name but endless days of more of the same. In the February cold, I still had plenty of fortune cookies left over from New Year's Eve. Now, they felt like messages from my past self, who weeks earlier celebrated an idea that everything was going to be better this year.
I opened one cookie each day that had me wondering what was next – be it between freelance contracts or unemployment. These randomized letters of comfort kept time and narrated my process for a new future for nearly two years. They set the pace for my resilience, and narrated the process of reinventing my future.
These fortunes were my treat for showing up. A vessel of encouragement by sugar and words. At my lowest, this cookie was the best part of my day. At my best, this cookie helped me feel confident enough to speak for myself and to my abilities as an artist. Things were in motion! All I had to do was take a little break to reach my next breakthrough.
The day I signed an offer letter, I had two cookies left. I opened the last cookie the morning of my first “first day” in a full-time role in almost 5 years. I never counted these out, but the timing didn’t feel like a coincidence.
I am incredibly fortunate.
Fortunate for my friends, artists, and colleagues along my career who put forth my name for collaborations, ideas, freelance leads, job referrals, and commissions. A wide range of talents who believed in and had worked with me months, years, even decades prior. Far more than 100 people in my orbit thought of me, and for this reason I had fewer than 100 idle days throughout 2 years of freelance work. This good fortune is hardly the result of psychological affirmations wrapped in cellophane. I can count on my network because they never counted me out – and accepted me for the whimsical, superstitious, ambitious, technical artist I always have been and will be.
I kept every fortune. This was my way of manifesting good fortune to meet me. I vowed that once I found certainty and my full-time footing, that I'd revisit the words from this ritual to commemorate this defining-yet-unclear time in my career and life.
This framed collection appears subtle by design, but the process and emotional toll was arduous and challenging. It was built upon hundreds of interviews, thousands of emails, months of all-nighters, years of unpaid holidays, and my equal parts confidence and delusion to say yes to every project.
Logic and passion are often at odds. That's where luck steps in.