My parents had been so happy I had consistent income; they weren’t concerned about whether I was feeling professionally fulfilled. The important thing was job stability, and so of course they pushed me to find another full-time job. And so I looked for one. For a while. I also economized. I moved out of my apartment and in with my boyfriend. To make ends meet, I relied on random jobs I found on Craigslist. The jobs were terrible, but easy, and I managed to make it work for four or five months.

It was through one of these random gigs that I was introduced me to Jeanne*, a Toronto-based filmmaker. After I did a little work for her locally, Jeanne asked me to move to Canada to edit a trailer for a film she was making. She’d cover the cost of the flight, my housing, and many of my living expenses on top of a small fee in exchange for the work. I was 23, I had nothing going for me in Virginia, and I’d never been out of the country. So I said yes. And I regretted it right away.

It wasn’t that Jeanne was a horrible person, or that Toronto was an unfriendly city. But I knew almost immediately the job was going nowhere. And it was a bad feeling. The gig was supposed to last two months, and it stretched into three and then four. I was doing more than just editing the trailer. She had me handling logistics and shooting footage, and all in all, I felt woefully unprepared for that kind of responsibility. In April 2013, I finally left Toronto. I headed to Chicago, Madison, and then finally back to Virginia — the creative wasteland.

Looking back on it, I feel like this was a lost period of time. I was so lazy. I worked on some creative projects, but I had no real motivation. How would I get the experience I needed to get the jobs I wanted? Nearly a year passed of getting by on Craigslist jobs and working for the indie filmmaker, and I was no closer to achieving my creative or professional goals. And in the midst of this, I just didn’t pay my taxes. I didn’t have a single 1099 to my name. I couldn’t bear to think about how much income I had made in 2013. I went so far as to file for an extension with the IRS, and I didn’t do anything else.

I made the excuse that I was too busy making ends meet (barely) and planning a move to New York with a guy I was seeing at the time. He was doing the same crappy freelance video production work I was, and he wanted to move to New York City, too. So we figured we could rely on each other for some financial support and take a leap.

The move didn’t mean an end to the struggle. I grabbed a gig here and there, still pretty low-paying. Sure, there were more jobs in New York, and they were in the film industry, but I had no consistency in my life. Lots of people in this city make the freelance economy work for them, but it wasn’t for me. I hated trying to create my own structure, and I was bad at self-motivation. I’m a terrible accountant, and aside from making sure I had money for rent, I wasn’t good at budgeting for other expenses — taxes among them.

To make it all worse, I wasn’t getting along with the guy I was living with. It’s funny and sad to realize how many of the romantic and social choices I’ve made in my life had something to do with my financial instability.

In September, I finally moved out and into another apartment with roommates. I was living deep in Bushwick, and my rent was almost as cheap as it had been in Virginia. Money was still super tight, but then, I had an epiphany: I could get a part-time job to alleviate some of the stress.

Why didn’t I think of this earlier? I’m not sure. I went to work for a fancy bakery in Soho, making $7 an hour. It was good to have some stability. And almost as soon as I took that part-time gig, I found a full-time job.