You either work for someone else or do your projects.

For as long as I can remember, I wanted to be famous. I wanted to be appreciated, and I wanted to do my projects. I started writing and doing interviews when I was 16 or 17, simply because I got a kick out of being on camera and having people watch me. Call it ego, attention addiction, whatever — it is what it is.

And I always had this idea in the back of my head that I must do my projects, launch my shows, and write books instead of working for someone else.

In my head, doing anything for someone else was somehow wrong. Not worthy of me. Shameful.

So whenever I needed a job (read: always) to pay the rent, I would try to do my projects on the side. I would try to combine doing interviews, writing books, and doing other things while having one or two full-time gigs. This led me to experience several things: a) I didn’t have enough emotional and intellectual bandwidth to focus on my full-time job; b) I would get burned out because of how much I had on my plate; c) the quality of my projects would suffer; d) I would disrespect my full-time gigs, deeming them “temporary”, which showed in my relationships with my bosses.

Eventually, as you can tell, this led to nowhere. I would either quit or get fired from my job, feeling burnt out and disgusted with myself for not putting enough effort and focus into it. (I’m a perfectionist.) And my projects wouldn’t go anywhere because they weren’t given the attention and care they needed. (Whatever you say…