Retiring Marlee Grace
Retiring Marlee Grace
On business dips, trust, and building new worlds
For the last eight years every year I have made more money each year than the year before. Every year my income has grown, sometimes doubled, sometimes increased by numbers I couldn’t believe. And then I retired Marlee Grace.
My income is currently at about half of what it was last year. It has caused me a lot of anxiety, shame, and fear. It has also caused me to do a lot of work to understand my value and worth outside of my salary as well as get really clear on where money is coming from and going.
Today I trust the process and the dip. I trust that it is teaching me something that the growth escalator could not. Today I trust that my higher power has a plan for me even if I cannot see it in front of me.
What is success?
What are goals?
What is magic?
What is the unknown?
Because I am self employed I feel this overwhelming feeling like : There is only one person to blame and that is the boss! And the boss is indeed …. me. The whole team is me. The writer, the teacher, the editor, the copywriter, the tech host, the email correspondent, the researcher, the marketer, the promoter, the HR person, the facilitator, the quilter, the PR person. The whole team seems to be falling behind.
This is a myth, it is not a solo endeavor. It is in part because of the systems that were not designed for us to thrive.
I want to pause to say how grateful I am for my job, my career, and how I have somehow managed to run a business as an artist and a writer for over a decade. This feels like a great mystery to me, hard work, and privilege all mixed together.
In the last few weeks I have been talking to different publishers about my next book and the offers on the table were much lower than I expected. It suddenly occurred to me : This is not Marlee Grace’s third book … this is Cody Cook-Parrott’s first book.
I essentially closed a business and started a new one. Marlee Grace retired with no savings and no retirement account. Even though the model and ecosystem looks the same, the signs on the front door are different. And my plummeting open rates show that not everyone got notice of the new business name.
This has sent me into some grief spirals I didn’t know were buried underneath changing my name. This pain of wishing I could have just kept my old name, that it hadn’t made me feel incredibly dysphoric, telling myself the story that I threw away so much of what I had built leading up to this point.
Transness doesn’t work like that though. It doesn’t let us stay in the box we were born in. Pronouns changed, body sliced, new name chosen. It begs us to pivot in ways that are not supported by a heteronormative patriarchy. We are called to be brave and to shape shift regardless of where the money falls.
I am in the portal of learning to trust. Of finding my way through even when the dips of self employment come crashing in. Everyone I talk to this year has lower art sales, less clients, lower enrollment, and is feeling the stress of pushing themselves creatively. When we’re witnessing multiple genocides, being manipulated by politicians, and working with our own internal griefs : How do we both tend to the inner self and find a way to monetize our gifts and services?
I am thinking about the extraction of self as job, the monetizing of the personal essay, the dance of wanting to be witnessed and also wanting to hide. How this can lead to a personal burn out which directly affects income and sales. That beyond the name change I have been teaching less, struggling to reach toward ideas and output.
I am thinking about the success of Landscapes, something I feel really proud of how it has formed itself into a bountiful group of writers looking to connect with each other and the world. I find ease in facilitating a group of people wanting to vision a different way of being.
I am thinking about grad school starting in two weeks, and how taking out student loans beyond my tuition is a choice I made so that I could take October off completely from work and have time to recenter and pay my mortgage on time. I have hope that this gift will return me to a place of center to be of better service. Capitalism wants me to push through and work harder, my wise self is telling me to slow down and then stop all the way.
I am thinking about how for years I have been hearing people talk about the ups and downs of business and thought it didn’t apply to me. And now as I am seeing it happen I feel humbled and scared.
I can feel afraid and still trust, this is what I know to be true today. I can say yes this is a time of great fear and loneliness, and yet I will still show up for my work and my fellows and my friends.
My life outside of my job is more fulfilling. My friendships are thriving, I get myself to the beach most days, I walk the dog, I make my food, I get enough sleep. I try to remember that success isn’t all in the numbers, it is also in how I feel.
Where are the holes though? How can I both accept what has changed and also see where there are opportunities to push myself more. To carve out the time to say : This is what I am teaching. This is how I am making money. This is how I am crafting my next book.
Thank you for being a reader, for being a part of my creative ecosystem. It is a pleasure to map this out in front of you. To show up not with the answers but with the discomfort.
As I was talking to
about the dips, the struggle to accumulate more of an audience, more income, more anything - she reminded me these weeks don’t belong to us. This time is of deep summer, of outside connection, of not working, of leisure, of people on vacation. To want to succeed and grow and sprout new ideas now may be futile.My hope is that if you are in a dip you know you are not alone. May our micro adjustments serve us and our practice. May big changes be examples to others of what is possible. Let us build new worlds together.
On Saturday I wrote about Kamala’s real tree hat and the questions it brought up for me for paid subscribers
I signed up for
workshop about creating reading habits : Avid - I am a few days in and already reading more than I have in monthsI also signed up for Jessie Young’s five weeks of at home mat pilates and already went this morning and it was so nourishing and good
Tuesday August 13 at Ann Arbor Friends Meeting House at 6:30pm
Really getting into Post Malone lately and even though I haven’t had a drink in over thirteen years songs about pouring ones are still my favorite
A week from today August 19 is SKY LIGHT : a beautiful evening in Suttons Bay, MI with dance, poetry, art, and community hosted by
. Grab tickets here- is running a little 15% off sale on their website with the code AUGUST - poetry, ceramics, and more!
This Saturday August 17 from 12-4pm EST is CAVE DAY inside of Landscapes : A writing group for all genres. I’ll guide us through some admin tasks and then we will jump into very deep writing time. Come for part or all of it.
This episode helped me think about what I wrote today. Also check out
:)My writing playlist is here for you whenever you need it
info@codycookparrott.com
PO Box 252 Cedar, MI 49621
Landscapes : A writing group for all genres
Yours was the first newsletter I subscribed to, first paid subscription, took your class and started my own, now have a microbusiness that pays the phone bill :) Isn't it wild to think of all the prosperity you've generated for everyone else? All these invisible partnerships? I know numbers aren't irrelevant when you're paying a mortgage, but what if there are other, invisible numbers, God's accounting? They're rising exponentially!
Grateful for your honesty with us, Cody. & you know—I didn’t change my name in the last few years (‘tis been over a decade), but I did see my enrollment rates and purchases plummet to a degree that emotionally wrecked and frightened me. For me, I think it’s because of the economic instability of recent years; during the early days of the pandemic, people were hungry for online education, and now they’re financially struggling and tired of Zoom and courses. At least, that’s my hypothesis. So many of your posts on this topic, such as the one you posted in June about your “worst launch,” have really helped me to feel less alone. Thank you for everything.