​Let this be warning. Let my nightmare help someone

Writing this because maybe it will be a warning to someone. And also too I need some place to vent. Do not, I repeat, do not leave your day job.

I got catch up in this beautiful rabbit hole dream of doing markets and crafts, quitting my job and being a full time crafter. Granted, I knew I would never be fully self sufficient. But my husband works full time, and with his pay would could do it. It would be tight, but he was happy to work through it to let me follow my dream. Hells, it didn’t seem like such a big dream compare to those TikTok folks. I just wanted a market stall and maybe one day to sell at the Ren Fair.

So like an idiot, I quit my job. And like an idiot, I believed my boss (who I thought I had a good relationship with) when she said I can always come back if I needed to. Things were tight, but do able. Bills were paid, food was kept up. Then everything went to shit. Car battery died along some other car issues. So a good 900 right there, all my savings. Husband got badly hurt at work and had to go on worker’s comp, which only paid a portion of his wages. So we had to borrow just to get rent paid. Health care co-pays started piling up. And then his dad had to be admitted to the ICU (still there now five weeks later), so I’ve been running back and forth with his mother trying to help her get things she needs and visit him. It’s an hour drive, and last week I had to tell her I can’t drive her to see her husband. That broke me.

Everything is just gone. All my saving, all my planing. Just gone. I don’t have money for market fees, Esty toke down my store (cause yay them), I can’t even afford gas and I’m trying to pawn stuff off just to pay rent. I’ve lost 20 pounds because we have barely any food (and no, the government still saids we make too much for assidents).

All this to say, don’t be me. I know that dream looks so close, so lovely. And you can have it, you can have your dream. But darling, storms come more often then rainbows. And when they do, they hit hard. Keep that job, keep that safety net. Don’t think that saving you’ve earned or those first couple of markets will pay it back. They won’t. Your saving will dry and you’ll be left like me. So depressed you can’t do jack, no way to sell and no foreseeable way out of this hole.