Before the clients, the money, and the business I have today, there was a tiny apartment, Craigslist, and a girl trying very hard not to give up.
As I write this, it’s raining here in California.
Not dramatic thunderstorm rain.
Just that steady tap against the windows that makes staying inside feel like exactly where you’re supposed to be.
I’m curled up at home with my tea, my animals nearby, and nowhere particularly important to be at this exact moment.
And something about that feels significant.
Because rainy days give me entirely too much time to think.
Today, apparently, we’re going back to the early 2000's...
God help us.
THE CRAIGSLIST YEARS
Picture it.
I’m living in a tiny one-room studio apartment.
I have a laptop.
Wi-Fi.
A 9-to-5.
College classes.
Bills.
And the completely unreasonable belief that somehow I could build something of my own on the side.
There was no Upwork.
LinkedIn wasn't what it is now.
There weren't thousands of people online explaining how to become a freelancer.
Nobody was posting twenty times a day telling me they'd cracked the secret and could teach it to me for the low, low price of $5,000.
It was me.
My laptop.
And Craigslist.
Yes.
Craigslist.
If you were freelancing online in the early 2000s, you already know what kind of wilderness I'm talking about.
One listing looked legitimate.
The next wanted someone with ten years of experience who was apparently willing to work for “exposure.”
Then there were the volunteer opportunities.
I use the word opportunity generously.
Apparently, some people truly believed that helping build their business for free was a privilege.
What a time to be alive.
SEND. WAIT. CRICKETS.
I'd sit there searching through listings looking for something promising.
Then I'd find one.
Okay.
THIS could be it.
I'd write a thoughtful email.
Explain my experience.
Tell them how I could help.
Proofread it.
Probably proofread it again.
Send.
And wait.
Nothing.
Maybe another one.
Send.
Nothing.
Another.
Nothing.
Sometimes I'd get a response and discover the “opportunity” was complete bullshit.
Other times, there wasn't even a rejection.
Just silence.
And when you're trying to build something you've never built before, silence starts messing with your head.
Maybe I'm not qualified.
Maybe nobody wants what I'm offering.
Maybe this isn't going to work.
Maybe I should just get a real job.
Which was particularly funny because I already had one.
I was doing this on top of everything else.
THE PART NOBODY COULD TEACH ME
I wish I could tell younger Monica that there was some beautiful moment when everything suddenly made sense.
There wasn't.
I learned because I kept going.
I learned how to recognize bullshit.
I learned how to ask better questions.
I learned that “exposure” does not pay PG&E.
I learned how to advocate for myself.
I learned that being grateful for an opportunity didn't require accepting disrespect.
And eventually, I learned how to recognize the difference between a client who valued my expertise and somebody searching for cheap labor.
Nobody handed me a roadmap.
So I started drawing my own.
Some parts were ugly.
Some were expensive.
A few probably deserved to be erased completely.
But it was mine.
THE HUSTLE DIDN'T BREAK ME
There's a version of hustle culture that romanticizes exhaustion.
That's not what I'm talking about.
I don't miss wondering whether someone was going to respond to my proposal.
I don't miss questionable gigs.
I definitely don't miss people trying to convince me that unpaid labor was somehow good for my résumé.
But I appreciate what those years gave me.
Resilience.
Discernment.
Experience.
And an almost supernatural ability to detect nonsense.
Those years taught me how to survive when there wasn't anyone around to tell me what to do next.
More importantly, they taught me that I could figure things out.
That's something I still carry with me.
BEFORE THE GLOW UP
It's strange looking around my life now and thinking about that studio apartment.
Because that woman didn't know where any of this was going.
She wasn't thinking about building a personal brand.
She wasn't planning to become The VA Godmother.
She certainly wasn't imagining that one day she'd teach other VAs the lessons she was learning the hard way.
She was trying to make some extra money.
Pay down a credit card.
Create more options for herself.
Keep going.
That's it.
And maybe that's why I have such a soft spot for people who are in their beginning stage.
Because beginnings rarely look impressive while you're living them.
Sometimes your beginning is a beautiful launch with professional branding and a business coach.
Sometimes it's 1 a.m. in a studio apartment scrolling Craigslist thinking:
Is this listing even fucking real?
Mine happened to be the second one.
IT DIDN'T LOOK LIKE A GLOW UP YET
I think we have a habit of looking at somebody's current life and assuming there must have been some clean path that got them there.
Mine wasn't clean.
There were bad clients.
Ghosting.
Rejection.
Undercharging.
Questionable decisions.
Long nights.
And plenty of moments when I wondered whether any of it was worth it.
But there were also first clients.
First referrals.
First payments.
First moments when I realized somebody was willing to pay me because I knew how to do something they needed.
Those little wins mattered.
They kept stacking.
Eventually, the woman hunting through Craigslist became a freelancer.
The freelancer became a business owner.
The business owner built an agency.
And somewhere along the way, all those lessons became something I could teach.
Not because I read them in a book.
Because I lived them.
MY LITTLE STUDIO APARTMENT DESERVES SOME CREDIT
If I could walk into that apartment today, I'd probably laugh.
Then I'd immediately tell younger Monica to stop applying to anything containing the phrase “great exposure.”
But mostly?
I'd be proud of her.
She kept trying when nobody was watching.
She didn't have followers cheering her on.
She didn't have a mentor telling her what came next.
She didn't know whether any of it would work.
She just knew she wanted something more.
And she kept looking for a way to create it.
There's something beautiful about realizing that the life you're sitting in today was once something a younger version of you couldn't even picture yet.
Which brings me back to this rainy afternoon.
The tea.
My animals curled up nearby.
The sound of rain against the window.
And the ability to sit here and write about a chapter that once felt incredibly uncertain.
Turns out, those hustle days weren't the part of my story I needed to escape.
They were the beginning.
And I wouldn't erase them.
Although Craigslist and I do not need to rekindle our relationship.
Some chapters belong in the archives.
CURRENT MOOD
“Unwritten” by Natasha Bedingfield
There couldn't have been a better song for that version of me.
I had absolutely no idea how the story was going to turn out.
No roadmap.
No guarantees.
Just a blank page and enough stubbornness to keep writing on it.
And all these years later, apparently I'm still adding chapters.
PEAK OF THE WEEK
This rainy afternoon.
Nothing flashy happened.
That's actually why I appreciate it.
Being able to sit inside my home, drink my tea, love on my animals, and reflect on the life I've built feels different when I remember the woman sitting in that tiny studio apartment wondering whether any of this would work.
She wanted more freedom.
She got it.
#TheHustleDays
XXX,
M💋
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