I'm Not Quoting Bowie
But it's time for some changes.
A year ago, I was just leaving a job that was making me very sad. I didn’t quite know what I was going to do next, but I knew I needed to get out. I worked with a career coach and eventually made the leap into starting this newsletter, to see what it might look like to give it my all.
More on that whole story:
Part of what was making me feel so sad, a year ago, was a feeling of smallness. My world was small —Microsoft Teams meetings, picking up my kids, an occasional dinner with friends — and my voice was small. In most of those work meetings, my camera was off and I was muted. The metaphor is too obvious, but you understand.
Today it feels so much bigger, and my voice is bigger too. In the ten months since I started Antiracist Dietitian, I’ve met so many people and cultivated a network that feels full of life and deeply nourishing — like a summer garden. But summer gardens are also a site of hard and thankless work, and that’s part of it too. The hard work and — here on Substack — the not-quite-enough subscribers to make the math make sense.
My husband, who is an actor and screenwriter, a member of both the WGA and SAG-AFTRA, started to see his opportunities for work dry up very early this year. Strikes were on the horizon, and auditions were few and far between. We lost our health insurance through SAG and the Substack math started to make even less sense.
This feels like an apology or a goodbye, but it isn’t. I obviously have been simmering all this on the back burner for awhile, thinking about how I can keep this work going if I am also working full-time and parenting two young kids. And what I’ve realized with burning clarity is: I want to make it work. I don’t want to stop. But I also know that if I want to support my family, I can’t keep going the way I’ve been going.
So I’m going to take a break, to figure out what makes sense for me and for you. I’ll be pausing charges on paid subscribers, so if you are a monthly subscriber, you won’t be charged during this time, and if you are an annual subscriber, this time off won’t be counted as part of your year.
I hope you will stick around as I take this time to reset and reassess.1 I have been bouncing around some ideas that I still plan to execute — about school food disparities, fat stigma in public health, and more — and I have no plans to change the essential nature of this newsletter. This will always be a place to question the nutrition status quo, to learn, and grow. I am grateful you are here with me, as I navigate this next chapter. Let’s see what it looks like to support my family and give it my all.
I’m leaving it open ended, but in my mind, it will be about a month, maybe six weeks?
You are an oasis in this wasteland of a profession. Please take all the time you need and when you are ready, we will be here taking strength and energy from your words to make things better.
Anjali - I just wanted to say that, as a fellow RD, you have helped me think deeply about issues I hadn't considered but also to put words to thoughts and observations I've had but never quite been able to express. Your work is really, really needed in our space!