Amena Brown:
That time I met India Arie. That time I went on a really bad date. That time I was directed by Robert Townsend. That time I got mono on Thanksgiving. That time I went on a really bad Christmas tour. That time I...
Amena Brown:
Everyone, I welcome you to this week's episode of HER with Amena Brown, which will be story time, that time I quit my job. So I feel like before I get to the actual moment, when I quit my job. I want to lay some groundwork as to what led me to working in corporate America, because it was a corporate job that I quit. Okay. I attended Spelman College, shout out to any Spelmanite that are listening. And my last year at Spelman was a very tough time, because Spelman is a very competitive school, not competitive in the sense that I felt like I was always competing against my classmates, but competitive in the sense that a lot of us who arrive to Spelman were already really successful in school. Some of us already have businesses or had started nonprofits and done all sorts of amazing things. So it was that same experience when you got to your last year that women were leaving Spelman to go on to do really amazing things.
Amena Brown:
They were getting admitted to these really prestigious grad schools and going to partner with this and that, organization or company whatnot. So I was experiencing the pressure of wondering what would be my cool thing that I would have to say I was going to do when I got out of school. And all I knew was that I wanted to be a writer, but I didn't really know where to start. And I was mainly focused on novelists who had been successful, and the main three that were in my head at the time was Alice Walker, Toni Morrison and Stephen King. All three of whom really hit their stride as far as becoming numerically successful when they were in their, maybe at earliest, their mid to late 30s and mostly early 40s. So I was looking at them thinking, well, here I am, 22 years old wanting to become a successful full-time writer.
Amena Brown:
I have no idea where you start doing that. And maybe I need to just find some stuff to do until I get to my 30s or my 40s, and maybe that's when all this stuff happens. So all that to say, I decided to apply to grad school because I thought grad school would buy me some time to figure out what in the world I was going to do. My plan was to get a Master's of Fine Arts in Poetry. And those of you that are familiar, know that when you get an MFA, that's considered a terminal degree in the sense that it's the highest degree you can get in a performing art or visual art, any type of art really. So I applied to grad school, I was denied an MFA in Poetry admittance. I was denied to every school I applied to. I moved in with my now best friend and her husband, and I got a job at Smoothie King because my friend Celita was working there at the time and probably took some pity on me and was like, "Girl, let me see if I can get you hired over here."
Amena Brown:
So this is my recent graduated from college life, right? Well, right as I'm working at Smoothie King and really in this tizzy about what in the world is my future? I get this amazing opportunity to do spoken word poetry at a very large Christian college student event. And some of you are listening, like what? Well, in another part of my life, a lot of my poetry career, as far as what I got paid to do, a lot of those opportunities came in predominantly white Christian environments. That was not something that I thought was going to happen, but this was my first foray into doing one of those events. And it happened to be a pretty big event, which gave me more exposure to people that were in church market, world vibes. So I went from working at Smoothie King, not knowing what in the world I was going to do to traveling with this organization and then getting invited by other churches and nonprofit organizations and doing that, but always working some side job or temp job in some way, it was never enough money to really do that full-time.
Amena Brown:
And then I got interested in arts journalism. So for a while, in my early twenties, I was juggling the road, traveling to different Christian events and performing poetry there, doing my little side job or temp job, whatever I was doing to really make steady money and writing articles about Atlanta's music scene. It was actually a very fun life, especially the music scene parts, because I was really able to get free tickets to a lot of movies and concerts and shows. I went to some of them by myself. Sometimes I took a date. Sometimes I took a girlfriend and we went and just hung out. And I just had to write an article to pay my penance or whatever for actually getting into the event for free. So somewhere around maybe 24, one of my temp jobs actually turned permanent and it was a receptionist job.
Amena Brown:
And if you are a writer of any kind, having a receptionist job is one of the best jobs that you can have, especially if it's a receptionist job where they mainly want you to focus on the phones, which is how this job was. I was working for a small business, it was for a commercial realty company. So most everybody else was handling any paperwork and different things. I didn't really have a lot of administrative tasks to do, but they needed somebody who was going to be there all the time during office hours to answer the phone. So I did that and let's tell my age a little bit. I updated my Myspace page, I had to switch my top friends around and I would write my articles from the night before. I would typically go out to a show or go to interview some artists at some venue somewhere.
Amena Brown:
And then I would have to go back into work the next morning and in between phone calls, that's what I do. So this was great for a while. This was my dream life for a while, until I was starting to feel the financial pinch, right. I'm working as a receptionist, which she didn't pay great, but paid better than me working just temp jobs off and on, but it didn't pay great. And I was getting paid some on the road, but the road wasn't regular either. And I was getting paid a little bit to write articles, but really not enough to survive. And I was starting to get antsy about that. I really wanted to be writing and performing full-time, but in lieu of that, I was like, "Man, if I could find a job where I could work in my field, maybe that would make me feel more fulfilled."
Amena Brown:
So my best friend was working at a Fortune 500 company at the time and she hit me up and she was like, "Hey, they're looking for writers to hire here." And I was like, "Oh my gosh, I didn't know anything about corporations hiring writers." So I want you all to know that college me really didn't see myself as a corporate America person. I just always felt like, "Hmm, that doesn't really seem like my vibe." So I didn't do any internships or anything like that. I didn't know anything really about how corporate America worked. So it didn't make any sense to me why they would be hiring writers. But once I saw the range of salary, I was like, "Hmm, I'm interested." So those of you that have worked a job and then wanted to apply and interview for another job, know that it's really tricky figuring out how you are going to leave the one job and go interview at the other place without tipping off your current job that you're interviewing.
Amena Brown:
And the only way that I could think to make it make sense was to do the interview when I was out from work, because I'd had my wisdom teeth taken out. And as I'm telling you all this, I'm like, surely there was a smarter way to do this. Surely I could have just maybe taken a day off or something. But I think as a receptionist, I don't think I had vacation days or anything like that. I think it was just on a day that I couldn't be at work to answer the phones was just a day I didn't get paid. So I don't remember when I was working full-time for that job as a receptionist. I don't remember ever taking a day off, but now I'm like, "Why didn't you just take a day off and just do the interview that day and go back to work?"
Amena Brown:
But those of you that have done this type of hustle before, it's like, you feel like everyone at work knows you took the interview. I think I was maybe worried about that. Anyway, I got my wisdom teeth taken out. I probably was on day three or day four of recovery, so my cheeks and jaw were still pretty swollen, but I took my pain medication and I put on my best blazer and suit that I had at the time and went and did the interview. And I can't remember y'all if the interview was in two parts, I feel like maybe it was, I feel like I had an initial interview with someone. And then when I came back for the second interview... Oh, now I remember, I think the first interview was just with someone generally from HR. And of course I'm having to explain to them that my face doesn't normally look like this and that my voice doesn't normally sound this way because I just had my wisdom teeth taken out.
Amena Brown:
And I think a week or so later, maybe I came back for the second round of interviews, which was actually with the person that was over the department. I would have been going into another manager from that department. And y'all the main thing that I remember about the second round of interviews for this corporate job is the manager of the department I was working in, which was considered in this company, employee communications. So we were basically like, I'm sure in some companies, we probably would be like where HR communications was because we were the department that would have been writing anything, could have been memos to safety manuals, but also the company had its own employee magazine and employee website. And so sometimes we would get to write human interest stories for things like that.
Amena Brown:
So when I get to this second round of the interview, they ask you all the typical things you get asked in an interview about your strengths and your weaknesses and times you had to show leadership and times you had to address conflict, and you try to pull some answer out of there about something that happened at summer camp. Right? And I remember the last question of the interview, what would have been my boss's boss's boss's boss asks me what makes you different than all of the other applicants that we've seen? What should make us want to hire you? And I drew a blank. I could not honestly think of what to say. And I just said the first thing that came to my mind, I said, I'm a joy to work with. And they both laughed, big laughs in the office.
Amena Brown:
And then after they left and I laughed a little bit too, but I was like, I guess it is funny, but for real. Really, I feel like anybody that works with me would say they had a good time working with me. So that was my calling card that they never forgot that that was my answer to the question. Bless my heart today. Anyway, so I start this job. I think I actually came back for a third time. And when I came back to the office for the third time was when I received the offer. And this is the only time, because this is the only corporate job that I ever worked. But this is the only time that I had that moment where they had typed up the offer and it was in the folder and they slid it across the table.
Amena Brown:
If I knew then what I know now, I probably would have negotiated a little more. But when I opened up that folder and saw the money, I was like, I'm rich, I'm rich. This is wow. Wow. Wow. All of that is going to be just for me. Wow. It didn't even occur to me to push them back and ask them for 5,000 more or 10,000 more. None of that occurred to me, I just looked at the money and I was like, Oh my gosh. And then I think they had some element of calculating what all of the benefits were worth as well. And this was a large, very established Fortune 500 company. So they had a lot of legacy type of benefits. They had the 401K with the up to 3% match and they have the insurance, they had a mental health line that you could call and get access to any mental health resources that you'd needed, they had financial advising.
Amena Brown:
It was all the benefits, everything. So I started working this job, there were three other women also hired in my same position. We were all hired into an entry-level. We were considered communications specialists, which meant we were entry-level writers coming into the company. One of the women of the four of us, she was legacy to the company because she had been working for the company for a while and been promoted from within. And then the other three of us were coming in from the outside. And y'all, I felt so professional, this was an old guard kind of company. So they wanted you to be dressed in a blazer if you left your cubicle. I think at the time that I was hired, which was 2005, women were not allowed to dress bare legged at work, you had to wear pantyhose, you had to wear closed toe shoes. So there were certain parts of it that I was excited about because it just felt so grown up. I remember going to the outlet mall with one of my girlfriends to get my first couple of suits.
Amena Brown:
So that part felt very grown up, but the whole pantyhose and the closed toe shoes, that was wild because that was just starting to get really uncomfortable, really fast. And they were very formal rules about wearing your blazer, you weren't supposed to leave your cubicle without wearing your blazer. But then if you were sitting at your cubicle, you were allowed to wear your blazer. At the time I was hired, the company was actually resistant to you listening to music with headphones at your desk. I'm sure some of y'all are listening, some of you that work in corporate are listening to me right now, like this is wild. These were wild times people. And this was a company that probably was 10 to 20 years behind what a lot of companies have come to with casual Fridays and allowing people to dress more casually.
Amena Brown:
So for the first six months or so, I can't say it was my dream job, but I was very happy to be getting paid to write. I was getting paid pretty well, I was able to afford an apartment of my own, I was just fully paying for all of my things, any concert that I wanted to go to, I could go to it. I was all ready for that, I was very excited about it. I think as time went on, I got about six months in before I realized I hated that job. And there's a couple of signs that happen to you when you hate your job. I started to get a burning sensation in my stomach Sunday nights, Sunday nights would come and I would just be like, Oh gosh, I would have to give myself a talk about why I'm going to go to this job.
Amena Brown:
I remember Kanye West's album Graduation came out while I was working in that job. And I had to find some music to listen to on my way to work, to motivate me to remember why I'm here trying to do this job, but I hope it helps my career. It was just slowly losing its allure because I don't know what I expected when they said they were hiring writers. I think I was hoping for something that was going to feel like a little bit of journalism and have soul to it. But this was a company that their business was very centered in supply chain, so it wasn't like I was working for a company that was very centered on creativity. They were centered on engineering and logistics and technology. They were not centered on you writing flowery things for anything.
Amena Brown:
So it turned out that a lot of what I thought was going to be some creative writing that could challenge me, some journalistic writing. A lot of it was actually taking things that other people had written 10 or 20 years before and just adding little tweaks and updates to it. That was basically my job. And I was bored to death and feeling very disillusioned about the whole thing. The other thing that was happening that made me go, "You don't need to maybe work here anymore." So I remember one of my managers, he pulled me into his cubicle and he was like, "Please sit down." And so I sit down and he's like, "Why do you ask so many questions?" Anybody who knows me very well knows that I have questions about just about everything, but in particular with writing, because I'm always like, "Well, why are we writing this? And who are we writing this to? And why are we being asked to write it this way?"
Amena Brown:
I remember asking him one time, "Is this propaganda that you're asking me to write?" And he said to me, "Amena, stop asking so many questions and just write, just don't think about it so much and just finish the task at hand." And I walked back to my cubicle and realized, I didn't know how to do that as a writer and didn't want to know how to do that. I didn't want to know how to separate my soul from writing. And that was when I realized that I needed to come up with an exit plan. Here's something else interesting that happened when I was at that job that really informed a lot of my choice to quit. So there was a Black woman manager in our department and she was very much a workaholic type personality.
Amena Brown:
She was one of those people that when she was at work, she gets the job done. But also if you email her something Saturday morning, she's going to email you back. She was on her job like that. And then she got pregnant. I remember she got pregnant. I remember she had her baby. And I remember when she came back to work, she was totally different. She had changed and people were expecting her to be available to them all the time. They were expecting her to work 50 and 60 hours a week. They were expecting her to make herself accessible to them all the time like she had before. And she just didn't want to, because she had gotten married and had this baby and she wanted to be with her family more. And I wasn't close to her and I never talked to her about it.
Amena Brown:
I just remember watching her, now, thinking about it, she was probably in her mid 30s to maybe early 40s and I'm 25, 26 watching her. And watching her negotiate things like those of you that work in corporate are familiar with FMLA which is the Family Medical Leave Act. And when you work in corporate, at least at that time, things may be different now. But when you worked in corporate then, you had a limited amount of time that you could take off, in the case that you had a baby or had other reasons to need to take FMLA. And watching her need the time to really take off, but watching her worry about her job security and probably coming back sooner than she wished she had to. Right. And so I'm observing all of this, and I made this internal promise to myself there in my mid 20s.
Amena Brown:
And I promised myself that, here I was, I wasn't married. I'm not even sure I was dating anyone at this point. I didn't have any children. And I promised myself that by the time I was 30, I wanted to be writing and doing my art full-time. And a part of my reason for doing that was because if I were to get married and decided to have children, I wanted to have freedom. I didn't want my corporate job to be able to tell me, what I had to do. And that was when it really started churning in me, you're going to have to leave this job. You got to figure out how you're going to do that. So I worked the job almost two years, and in the meantime, I'm using all my vacation days to take gigs out of town. And there were times that requests would come in for me to perform at different events.
Amena Brown:
And I had to say no, because it was a Wednesday in the middle of the week. And it would be too awkward for the stuff I had going on at work for me to take that gig out of town in the middle of the week. Of course, to me, it felt like there were just tons of gigs I had to say no to, it probably was not tons. It was probably five or less, but all of those times that I had to say no, because I was working this job, I didn't like, it just burned me up. So every year around Christmas, we would get a Christmas or holiday bonus. And the holiday bonus was basically a third paycheck. So you were already getting your two paychecks a year. Every year that I worked there, I got a little bit of a raise. And then you were getting this third check and I don't know why maybe by this time I had just become so dissatisfied with the job.
Amena Brown:
And I felt like I missing out on all these opportunities to really do what I wanted to do for a living. I just decided when I get this Christmas bonus, whenever it hits my account, as soon as it clears in my account, I'm going to put in my two week notice, and I did. Put in my two week notice, feedback about that decision from my coworkers was very mixed. Some of my coworkers were like, "I know you'll make it. You'll do great." Some of them were a little bit familiar with some of the other things I was doing outside of work, performing and stuff. Some of them were like, "I wish I could do what you're doing, but I just stay in this job for the benefits, for my family or for my health or what have you." And some people honestly were just like, "This is the dumbest thing you can do."
Amena Brown:
And they were just like, you finally got a job with a company that basically doesn't fire anyone in corporate. They don't fire anyone. They were like, no, can't say what the other parts of the workforce experienced there. But in corporate, it was very rare that they ever did furloughs or layoffs. So they were like, "You basically got a job that you could keep until you retire. Why would you leave here on some fleeting dream of being a writer?" And of course, as I say it out loud, it does sound fleeting. But to my then 27 year old self, it didn't sound fleeting at all. So I quit. I still remember waking up with anxiety that January, realizing that I was working for myself and I didn't have a boss and I just kept waking up with anxiety because there wasn't anyone to tell me what to do every day.
Amena Brown:
I also was waiting for all the requests to come in. I was like, "Where are all the emails?" "Hey, everybody I'm available." Well, let's have a little lesson in economics. Shall we? Because I quit my job December 2007. And what happened in 2008, the market tanked everyone, guess who didn't study economics? Guess who didn't even know the market was tanking at the time? Okay. So all that to say, mainly the arena that I was working in at that time, I was performing in predominantly Christian white conservative settings. Okay. So these were mostly, if not all non-profit organizations that I was working with. So their budgets got hit too. They don't have the extra money to be paying for a poet to become in, to talk about anything. So I had no invitations to speak, no gigs, very little money. And then I fell in love and no, y'all not with my husband. I fell in love with this other man, all of this story I'm telling y'all is before I met my husband. Okay.
Amena Brown:
So I fell in love with this man. And now that I think about the timing of this, I fell in love with this man that was like, I can only describe our friendship as it was a flirty friendship that the two of us had. We were both performing artists, he was a lot more established in his career than me. But we had met out in the performing artists scene in Atlanta, try dating, decided to just let that be friends. But even though we had said the words out loud, let's be friends. It really wasn't like that when we would see each other, even though we both dated other people, would see each other all the time. There was just this electricity still there. So I think maybe because I had more free time, now I know that wasn't really free time. That was actually time that I should have been building my business, but you live, you learn.
Amena Brown:
Because I had more free time. And because I had a big crush on him, we started hanging out more and then we're like, "Okay, you're single, I'm single. We've always been toying around with this idea let's date." So we date and look, I'm head over heels in love with the man. If he says he want to watch Netflix and hang out all day. Sure. If he wants to go bowling. Great. If he wants to catch a movie in the middle of the day, I'm saying yes to that. He can do some of these things because he's more established than I am. He's making more money than I am at the time. So when he's like, "Hey, let's go chill." It's after he's done a big project for a client and he's getting paid, I'm going months and months and months no pay. Right. Well, we try the dating thing and after a few months, discover this isn't working, more so that he discovered let's be honest. More so that he discovered it wasn't working for him and I just had to be like, yeah. Okay. Yep. Well, I have to accept that thing.
Amena Brown:
So right at the time that he and I are going through the breakup time. And when I say he, and I really mean me, because I don't know that he was struggling or suffering in any way after that breakup. I was quite heartbroken over it at the time. And right around the time that we go through this, we're not going to be dating each other. And I'm just in my destitute breakup time, any of you that have been through that type of destitute breakup, it's like you're wearing the sweats. You don't remember the last time you showered. You're just eating food and crying a little bit, probably crying a lot. That's what it was like. Around this time, I'm also realizing that I'm going broke, because I didn't really have any savings going into this decision to quit my corporate job. I didn't really have any savings. All I had was that extra check and that wasn't going to carry me very far. So I'm going broke. There are bills that are due that I'm not able to pay them. I'm living in an apartment, I can no longer afford.
Amena Brown:
My car gets repossessed. I have to borrow money from family members and friends to get my car out of repossession. I have to move out of my cute little one bedroom apartment. Those of you that live in Atlanta, I had a cute one bedroom apartment in Vinings. It is just the cutest little neighborhood. I had to give up that little apartment, get that car back out of repossession. A friend of a friend opened up her home to me. I moved in with her and rented out a bedroom and a bathroom from her. And I think in that moment, I'm feeling like a failure, honestly, because I think it had not even been a year. I'm trying to think, had it even been a year, maybe it had been a year, maybe, a little over a year and there I was just broke and struggling.
Amena Brown:
And that was not in the script that I had developed for myself. That when you are watching the movie about the girl who quits her corporate job, she has a few scenes where she cries and things don't go well. But then something really amazing happens to her and then everything works out fine. And I was not experiencing the works out fine. I felt like a failure. I felt embarrassed that I had seemed so confident in my choice to quit my job. So I felt a lot of feelings about that time and feeling like a big failure and also feeling like I didn't know how to talk to God. And for me, not only having grown up in a Christian context, but I grew up in a charismatic, Pentecostal Christian context. It was very much like, we have faith, we believe these things, these things happen.
Amena Brown:
And so I think even believing that way in the context of where my Christian faith was at the time, made accepting this moment very hard, because I not only felt like a failure, but then I was questioning, did I cause this? Did God air quote, speak to me and tell me to do this? Was it the right thing? Was it the wrong thing? And I remember going through a long period of time after I had moved out of my apartment and moved in with my then housemate. And on top of that, I had started working a customer service job because I was broke. In order for me to pay rent to her, I was going to have to work somewhere. And the gigs had dried up to the point that I didn't even know if I would ever have more of a career doing spoken word.
Amena Brown:
So I found out that this company was hiring customer service associates, and it was a big cattle call thing. And all of us that were broke, we went and you filled out all the stuff. And then you had so many weeks of training, but they really didn't have a lot of choice timeframes for the training. So the one that they had mostly available was 4:00 p.m. to 1:00 a.m. in the morning. And so I did my training, I think the training was six weeks and it was paid training. So there were a lot of people who were not intending to stay at that job, but they were intending to finish their six weeks training and get paid and then move on and do something else. I remember my birthday that year, I was so broke and everyone else in my training class was so broke that when my birthday came, I had to work on my birthday and they bought the Hostess CupCakes from the vending machine and put coffee stirrers inside of the cupcakes and sing happy birthday to me.
Amena Brown:
And I blew onto the coffee stirrers as if they had candles. Right. And working in that job was humbling. One, because again, I'm dealing with just feeling like I failed at trying to do my artist's career. And being back to working, especially after having worked a corporate job, which paid well and had all the good benefits. And now being back to working a much lower amount per hour, not having any benefits at all, basically it's like the amount of time you show up here is the amount of time that you're going to get paid for. And when you don't show up, you don't get paid. There were no vacation days. There was no 401K. There was none of that stuff. And working in that job really in a way, I think it gave me the time to myself to really process what was happening.
Amena Brown:
It was also hard for me because I had a very nice social life at the time. And once I started working that corporate job, I was missing everything, everyone's birthday parties and all the cool shows we would have gone to. I really just was going to work and coming home. And the time that I had as free time, all the rest of my friends were at work. And in a way, me having that time alone, number one, I think it helped me to give myself time to process all that had happened. The stress of the breakup, the going broke, the having to ask my family members for money. I'm an oldest kid. I'm very like I would rather shoulder it all on my shoulders than have to ask my parents for money. So I had to be in dire straits to do that.
Amena Brown:
And it was very humbling to go to them and ask them. And I finally had, after three months of working the job, I finished the training. And then after you finished training, there were certain positions available on the floor. But most of the positions that were available were at the least desirable time at night. So I stayed on the 4:00 p.m. to 1:00 a.m. shift and just worked there once I finished my training. And I think after working in that job, when I hit that three, four month timeframe, I started to realize that I needed to surrender. And surrender is a word I really hate for various reasons. It's not a word I love. In the context of my Christian faith, surrendering means, you are saying to God, that you trust God with your life. And I hate that. I just hate it y'all.
Amena Brown:
I hate it because you're asking me to trust my life to someone that I can't see and to trust my life to someone whose decisions I question sometimes, but in my relationship to God, feeling like I do trust that God knows better than I do. So I do I want to surrender to God, these expectations, these things. But I think also inherent in the word surrender is letting go of what our expectations may have been. And I thought I was going to be a shooting star after quitting my corporate job. I thought all of these amazing opportunities were just going to fall at my feet. I thought I wasn't going to have to work that hard honestly. And so the other element of surrendering that I had to do was letting go of those expectations. And just, that was my first time in a long time, just opening my hands to life and saying, "Hey, this is what I thought I was supposed to do."
Amena Brown:
I thought I was supposed to perform poetry. I thought I supposed to be a writer. Maybe that's not it. Maybe there's something else for me, but whatever it is, I was just saying in my own prayer, out of my soul to God, whatever it is that you have planned for my life, I want to do that more than I want to meet up to some expectations I made somewhere. And I'll tell you what's interesting. When you get it to a place... It's weird y'all, because I get really leery of people being like, "And as soon as I prayed that prayer here comes this opportunity." Or as soon as I surrendered this thing here comes this. I really don't think life is that clean cut of an equation. I think there will be plenty of times that you may pray the prayer.
Amena Brown:
You may surrender the thing and you may still have to go on and not see this huge, big change. But at the same time, and this is what was true for me in this moment. I think also when we come upon a sense of openness inside of ourselves and we become open to the fluidity of life, we become open to the fact that our happiness doesn't have to look one way or our approach to our vocation doesn't have to look one way. I think that does in this very spiritual sense, openness up to the possibilities of life. And I do think there is this energy out in the world, that when you do that act of surrendering, whether that looks like it did for me and my Christian faith or whatever that looks like for you in however you practice spirituality.
Amena Brown:
I do think there's something powerful about the act of being open-handed about one's life, that can open you up to the opportunities to come. I don't think it means this plus this equals this, but I do think it opens you up to that. And so after I had that moment, I'm still working my job, get to the point that I worked there long enough to choose a different shift. So I was able to work during the day and I start getting some calls out of the blue to perform at a college here or there, perform at a church here or there. And I'm just taking in the gigs as they come, I've been doing nothing but working. So I was paying down my debts and building up my savings and taking the money that I was making whenever I did get a gig and just acting like I didn't get it, just banking it and putting it in savings and only living off of the money that I was making at my job.
Amena Brown:
And I get this call to do this particular event. They were having a ten-year anniversary and their theme for the event was, On Your Mark. And I remember being on the conference call as they're telling me, the different things about the theme. And they're like, "Oh, we'd love for you to write a custom poem to open our event." And I was listening and almost started to cry on the call, because as they were talking about the theme and what do we do when we feel that we've missed the mark? I just felt like they knew my life somehow. And I remember working on that poem and writing that poem from such a tender place, because I actually really did feel those feelings and putting my own questions and my own uncertainties and doubts into the piece. And I remember when I went to do the sound check, I didn't realize how big of an event it was.
Amena Brown:
So at that time, the event was in this arena in Atlanta and the arena could seat 12, 13,000 people. And I'm one of those people that sometimes when big opportunities come to me, I psych myself out and I'm like, it doesn't have to be that big of a deal. It's not that big of a deal. I do that to myself all the time. And so I started giving myself that story, when I walked into the arena, I was like, Oh, but then I was like, it's okay. You're just opening the event. There's lots of people are going to speak and perform. It's not that big of a deal. It was totally that big of a deal y'all. Okay. So I came back the next day, perform this piece that I'd written at the opening.
Amena Brown:
I remember I came out into the lobby of the arena, because I was actually looking for a friend of mine that I was trying to meet up with. And all these people walk up to me. They're giving me their business cards. I for the record have no business cards. I have no CDs that I can remember to sell at that point. I'm just there with... Y'all to be utterly honest, I had a little mini legal pad where the pages looked like clouds. Okay. That is all I had, that and a wallet to my name, that's it. All these people came up wanting to write down their information in my notebook, stuffing their business cards into my notebook. And I went home that week. And from that event, I got so many invitations to speak that there wasn't going to be a way to take them all and still work my job I'd been working.
Amena Brown:
And I had been saving money for the times that inevitably come where you don't have gigs come in. And so I quit my job again, January of, I think would have been 2010. Yeah. I quit my job again, January 2010, but this time I feel like I quit my job much better. I was more prepared for the ups and downs of what it really means to be a full-time artist. I had saved up money. I had decreased my debt. I was really living on less, I had decreased my expenses as well. So I went into the second time quitting with a much more business mind. So that time I quit my job for good. I've never had to, again, pick up a job, a 40 hour a week job. I've been full time as a performing artist, as a writer since then.
Amena Brown:
Here are my takeaways I wanted to share with you, because prior to the pandemic, I would get questions all the time when I would travel and people would be like, "Oh, I hate my job. I really want to be doing this." And they would fill in the blank with whatever their dream was. I really want to be doing that. And, Oh, I'm just so tired of my job. I think I'm just going to quit and just starting out. I'd be like, no, no, no. Don't quit your day job yet. And I know the stakes are different now. Even for a lot of my friends that had been doing very well, speaking, performing, doing things that require you to be in front of an audience, all of us experienced this big shift in 2020 of trying to think about, okay, well, what does that look like now?
Amena Brown:
What does all of that mean? But even in the midst of a pandemic, even in the midst of really hard times, it doesn't mean that we cease to have dreams or cease to have things that we're passionate about. So I want to tell you, if you are currently working a job where you are feeling that [noise] in your stomach on Sunday nights, before starting work on Monday, where you are having to give yourself a big pep talk before you get on any of these Zoom meetings. I want you to not quit your day job just yet, before you quit save money. That's one piece of advice I would have gone back to give myself. When I worked corporate, I was really making more money than I knew what to do with. And if I could do anything all over, I would go back and just save money.
Amena Brown:
Not just blow through it, save the money, stack the money. If you are going to do anything, that's a dream of yours, as a vocation. You will inevitably go through times, that will be more lean, where you won't have as much money coming in. Even the success stories that you read about are very rarely just this linear experience, where they just start from nothing and whoop everything goes well. That's actually very rare that that happens. A lot of is not very linear, it's a lot of starts and stops. It's a lot of feast and famine. You're going to experience both sides of that. So save money, get out of debt as much as you can, use the job that you're working, that you may hate right now, use it to help you fuel your dreams. Some of us are going to be privileged enough that we have family members or parents that can give us that seed money to get started or have an inheritance we can lean on.
Amena Brown:
But most of us won't have that. Most of us will be our own inheritance really. We will be the ones that will put together that initial seed money for ourselves. So do those things, also write a business plan. Dreams can be very emotional. And that also means that sometimes our ego and our value and worthiness can get all tied up in our dreams. And if we achieve our dreams and wanting people to applaud us and different things, but dreams are not just emotional things. If you want your dream to actually become a reality, you need a plan. And I think a basic business plan is a great place to start. There are tons of great business planning books, but I also like to say, you don't have to start just spending money to get your business started.
Amena Brown:
There are so many great resources, even online that won't cost you anything. There's the library where you can go and check out some of those books, but at least get yourself a basic template for a business plan and fill it out. Even if you're a performing artist, even if you're like, "But I make pottery." Yeah. Fill out the business plan. You're a dancer. You're a choreographer. Yes. Fill out your business plan. You do visual art. Yep. You fill out a business plan. I know, especially for those of us that are doing creative work, business plans can feel corporatey and can feel non-intuitive to us. But even those of us that are arts connoisseurs and are creatives and maker as well. There will still be business involved, if you intend for this to be what is helping you make a living, there will still be contracts to sign.
Amena Brown:
And you'll have to decide on what your rates are, and if those rates are really equal to the time that it actually takes you to make what you're making. So becoming a full-time artist or whatever your dream is to do full time, it also means becoming a business person. And I think if you're prepared for that, then you're better off and better suited to actually survive it in the long run. And I also want to speak to this, being a full-time artist, isn't everything. And that's not me being self-deprecating, it's not me doing the thing where sometimes when someone is doing well in a particular area of their life, then they start to downplay it and be like, "Well, let me tell you all the things that are actually really bad about it." That's not me saying that. What I mean is whatever your dream is, it doesn't have to be your vocation.
Amena Brown:
And I think sometimes we make a pedestal of our dream becoming our job, and it doesn't always have to be that way. I love what I do. I've been, full-time doing this. Oh my gosh, it'll be 11 years this year. And I had to remind myself end of last year and into this year, that part of the reason why I wanted to become a full-time artist was for freedom. And the day that this is no longer freedom to me, then it's okay. If I decide I want to go back and work for someone else. It's okay If I decide, I want to go back into corporate America or wherever I find myself going. I've learned over this journey to not put pressure on how a thing has to look, that it's most important that the core part of what I'm doing and why I'm doing it are still there.
Amena Brown:
And truth be told, there are so many people who honestly are never going to do their dream full-time. And they make a conscious choice sometimes, sometimes it's what they have to do for survival. They have to work that job, so that it can pay their bills, so they can take care of their family members or whatever. So it doesn't mean that a person with a dream is a failure because they don't do that dream as their job. And I wish I heard more people saying that, honestly, because I feel like society and capitalism, to be honest, can put this pressure on you, that everything you dream, it's not real. You're not dedicated to it, if it's not what you do for your job. And there are plenty of people who are doing their dream for their job and they're burnt out and it's affecting their health, because they wish that maybe they were working somewhere else and doing their dream on the side.
Amena Brown:
I think what's most important is that you find something that you love and do that as often as you can. And for some people that's going to be once a year, there's going to be some people that get an opportunity to just write once a year. And for some people it's a few times a year. And for some people they'll do what they love every week and work this job that isn't really their jam, but it's the job that fuels their ability to do their dream. So don't let anybody put pressure on you either way. Don't let anybody put pressure on you, that your dream has to be your job. And if you're working your dream job and it's no longer your dream anymore, you're not a failure for changing. You're not a failure for deciding to do different things. Find something you love and do it some other time, as much of the time as you can.
Amena Brown:
Anyway, I hope you all enjoyed this edition of, That Time I, I hope you think about whatever your dream is. I know we're in a pandemic and I know some of our dreams probably feel even further away than they did before, but it doesn't mean that that has to be the end of the story of your dream. Don't give up on your dream and don't put pressure on yourself for your dream to look one particular way. If there's anything, I hope you walk away from our story time together. I hope you walk away thinking about how you can approach your life more open-handed, how you can find a rhythm of surrender, whether that is in your relationship with God, if that's what you believe or whether it's in your relationship to yourself.
Amena Brown:
Thank y'all so much for just coming into the living room and taking off your shoes, bringing in your snacks, hanging out with me while we have a little story time. And I hope as I'm sharing my story, that maybe it reminds you of some of your own story too. I hope it sparks some conversation with you, maybe among your friends or your coworkers at that job you hate. Isn't it funny that you can have a job you hate and still love the people you work with? And I guess you can also have a job you love and not really enjoy the people you work with. So you've got to find enjoyment wherever you can. Okay. Hey, if you have more questions or other things that came to your mind that you want to know about what it's like to see dreams become reality. I would love to address them here on the podcast.
Amena Brown:
So I am inviting you to slide into my DMs, not with any of that stuff where those men will be on there trying to be your sugar daddy. Don't slide into my DMs with that, but slide into my DMs. If you have any questions or feedback about this, you can follow me and my DMs @amenabee on Instagram and Twitter. I would love to engage with you there, get some feedback from you here, if there are any follow up questions I can address in another episode.
Amena Brown:
For this week's edition of Give Her A Crown. I want to give a crown to my mom, Jeanne Brown. My mom raised my sister and me as a single mom. And now that I'm a grown woman, I know it was harder for her than I could have known it was as a child. My mom has survived so many things and she raised my sister and I to be free thinking women. And my mom worked her dream job. She wanted to be a nurse ever since she was a little girl, so she became one. She was actually finishing nursing school with me in her belly. And despite the racism that she encountered that tried to keep her from succeeding, she became a neonatal nurse and is still in her nursing career. She never put pressure on me to get married or to have kids. She only encouraged me to achieve my dreams and to get an education. If it weren't for her, I wouldn't be here talking to y'all today. To my mom, Jeanne Brown, Give Her A Crown.
Amena Brown:
That time I met India Arie. That time I went on a really bad date. That time I was directed by Robert Townsend. That time I got mono on Thanksgiving. That time I went on a really bad Christmas tour. That time I...
Amena Brown:
HER with Amena Brown is produced by Matt Owen for Sol Graffiti Productions, as a part of the Seneca Women Podcast Network and partnership with iHeart Radio. Thanks for listening. And don't forget to subscribe, rate and review the podcast.