I have a bad habit of working for free. I blame grad school.

There, I did tons and tons of work for very little money, like teaching undergraduate classes or rewriting senior faculty articles. The classes and the diploma cost me money, which required student loan payments that continued into my 40s. The degree cost time, which meant that I was inconveniently pregnant just when it was time for me to enter the job market for the first time.

In graduate school, I was trained to believe that the life of the mind should not be sullied with filthy lucre. Reading books was reward enough! Even after grad school, the handful of entry level jobs that were available to me wouldn’t have paid for my childcare bills. So that meant that I was forced to take even lower paid jobs where I was regarded as disposable trash by the larger academic community, just because I need the flexibility.

Later, I went onto juggle childcare and special needs caretaking with barely paid work in journalism and social media writing. A typical day would involve 18 hours a day of work, if you include parenting and caretaking stuff, which I do. Most of the days brought in exactly zero dollars.

The past twelve months has been a rather stellar time of poor career choices. I spent six months running for office — lots of work and no money. After that, I started up a new “venture” providing autism parents with information about college and other transition information. I did a great job building up the venture. Tons of followers, webinars, information, one-on-one Zoom meetings, but no business model. I figured I would monetize later.

Well, monetizing has to happen now. I’ve been too busy to sit down for months. I can’t sustain this level of work, particularly without pay.

After a lot of debate, I decided to monetize my work with consultations and customized services for individuals and schools. I wish I could give out my services for free, but the status quo is not sustainable. 503’s and grants are too much hassle. I’ll do some pro bono work on the side, but I must subsidize my work with private services.

This is hard for me. Friends have sat me down, just in the past week, and told me to knock it off. I need to go to capitalism school to undo years of bad choices.