Why I Launched This Newsletter (and Changed My Life)

A big announcement and a story of midlife confusion.

Photo by Justin Luebke on Unsplash

When I wrote the story of how I became an antiracist dietitian, it wrapped up nice and tidy at the end. I had a great job in New Orleans where I learned so much about racial equity, but then I moved to Denver and now here I am!

But it wasn't tidy at all; it was messy and full of heartache, but it has a happy ending. It's basically like a rom com, if rom coms were about dilettante-ish women in their 40s trying to figure out what to do with their lives. (Are you listening, Hollywood? I'd watch that.)

My career path has never been a straight line, which in grad school, I came to see as a strength. I had all these weird little pockets of experience and perspective from the jobs I had held and places I had lived. It's one of the reasons why I decided not to pursue a PhD—I thought what I had to offer the world was the unusual breadth of my food-related experience, not the ability to dive deep on one specific topic. But when I started applying to jobs in Denver, a city where I had few contacts in the food system, my resume felt like a liability, its pieces so disparate, leading to no clear conclusion. 

I didn't really know what I wanted to do next. I couldn't even figure out how to set up a decent LinkedIn alert because the opportunities to do something interesting in Denver seemed vast, and they were all so different. Did I want to work at a food bank increasing its culturally relevant offerings, or for a health-focused start-up, or work with a city program for entrepreneurs, or do diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) training for a B-corp, or or or…?

I was jealous of people who had studied something in college, then got a master's degree in it, then worked in the field they studied for a decade or more, working their way up in an orderly and understandable way. I felt like I was always in a chute, never a ladder. And still, after all this time, I didn't even know what ladder I wanted to climb. It was paralyzing.

I decided to give local government a try. I was curious about the potential to impact people's lives on a larger scale, and cities and counties in the Denver Metro area had many DEI-related jobs that seemed interesting. But it turned out the job was not the right fit, a realization that hit me pretty soon into starting it, a sinking rock in my gut that pulled me down with it.

If this job isn’t working, will any job work for me? Will I have to start another exhausting job search? Can I quit today? What do I even want? What if I get what I think I want, and then I still feel miserable? What if it is me? My brain went in circles, in the pages of my journal, and in conversations with my husband.

To get out of my own head and have some outside perspective, I decided to see a career coach, and luckily found Kris Risley, who specializes in working with public health professionals. In our initial consultation call, she said it sounded like I was in the wrong position in the wrong organization. But what she helped people with was figuring out what kind of work was truly meaningful for them, and finding fulfillment in their lives as a whole. Was that what I was looking for? Yes, I said. I think that’s what I need.

It's almost hard to remember how defeated, sad and confused I felt about work then, because I feel so differently now. But I'm looking at some of the exercises I did early on, after quitting my bad-fit job, and remembering the heeadspace I was in when I wrote:

What happened: I realized how small my existence and work feel compared to how big my spirit is, and how big my life and impact have felt in the past. I am feeling more brave about what I might take a swing at.

Why did it matter: You can't see what's possible through a pinhole. By breaking things open, I am able to imagine a future I couldn't see before. I am taking a gamble on myself and my potential rather than staying with what is safe.¹

Turning my @antiracistRD Instagram account into a Substack newsletter was always on the table as a potential income stream. My sadness around not having creativity and writing in my life when they were, I thought, foundational to my sense of self was something that came up quite a bit in my conversations with Kris. But it wasn't until I sat down to actually write the first post that I realized how transformative this newsletter was going to be for me. It was all the best parts of blogging, but I could bring in all my additional knowledge and experience of the past several years. And there was the potential to be paid fairly for the time I spent doing it, without descending into the depths of sponsored posts and advertisers' priorities. The first week of writing, I walked around with the hugest smile on my face; I felt a sense of purpose and joy I hadn't experienced in years.

And miraculously, that feeling has continued, through two months of twice-weekly posts, writing about the kinds of topics I have thought about for years, but never had an outlet to explore: how the local food movement centers the values of affluent white people, about the intersection of food and gentrification, how the conversation around food security neglects the work that goes into turning food into meals, and all the things about being Asian.

My Friday Joy posts have also been surprisingly fun to write, bringing some humor and lightness to a space that would otherwise be nonstop heavy in a way that I as a person am not. I told you about exercising as an introvert, the time I went full Rear Window, why the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics is like the ex I can't stop following on Instagram, and more.

Wednesday essays are me in a blazer, presenting to you from a well-researched PowerPoint. Friday essays are me inviting you over to my place to hang out and drink tea in our socks. I like having both spaces in this newsletter; it feels like me.

And here's where we get to it: I'm launching a paid subscription level this week.

If you find value in what I write—if it has made you think, made you smile, made you nod yes, made you read a book or a paper so you could learn more, made you happy that someone is out there saying the the things I'm saying—I hope you will become a paid subscriber for $6 per month or $60 per year. I'll let you do the math to figure out what the value of $6 is and if matches up with what you get out of a month of this newsletter.

Wednesday essays will always be free and available to everyone. Paid subscribers will also receive Friday Joy newsletters, as well as additional content that is in the works, including interviews, a community book club, and a Q & A column. 

If you work with a group of people who might benefit from this newsletter, you can buy an annual group subscription for two or more people at a 20% discount.

If you would like to give a subscription as a holiday gift, you can buy a gift subscription and schedule it for delivery later.

If you have the budget, you can buy at the Founding Member level for $160 per year. In addition to receiving my undying gratitude, your support will allow me to offer all-access free subscriptions to nutrition students and dietetic interns, and you will receive additional perks that are also in the works (hint: FUN MERCH).

If you are a nutrition student or dietetic intern who can't afford a paid subscription, or just a person who does not have the budget for a paid subscription, please email me at hello@anjaliruth.com and I will happily give you a subscription, no questions asked. (If you are a student or intern, feel free to tell me more about where you are studying/working and what you are up to! I always love hearing from RD-to-bes.)

Whether you go paid or not, I am so grateful to you, for reading this newsletter. I felt so lost this year, trying to cram my sprawling, misshapen career into a slot meant for people with tidy, focused job histories, and questioning myself when it didn't work. In coming back to writing in a way that let me embrace that sprawl, I knew I was finding happiness and meaning in my work, but I wasn't sure how the rest of the world would feel about it. Your “likes,” comments, emails, texts, shares with your newsletter readers or friends—all have buoyed me and made me feel that this left turn into the unknown was exactly the direction I needed to go. Thank you.

1. I think it is super weird and annoying when people make these big life changes and don't tell you how they are, like, paying for their housing and groceries. So I'll tell you: We are living off of savings and residuals from my husband's old job, which gives me a bit of breathing room to see if I can make this big change financially sustainable. It is a huge privilege and I am not taking it for granted.

…I also find it annoying when people refer to their spouses like you are supposed to know who they are or what their deal is, so I'll save you the Google: my husband is an actor and was a series regular on NCIS: New Orleans. This is my favorite clickbait story about us: ‘NCIS: New Orleans’ Star Rob Kerkovich’s Wife Posted the Sweetest Tribute to Her Husband, the Birth Coach.