From Burnout to Book Deal!!

You Are Not Your Job (Coming 2027)

I actually originally wanted to go to college for creative writing… I rarely tell people this.

This was 2013-2014, and I was a junior in high school. I started to get serious about writing creative stories around then. It was an escape for me as I was unraveling the awareness of my insane home life.

I thought maybe I could go to NYU?

My junior year, I got put on academic probation because my mental health, home life, and drug use were getting in the way of my IB program. A really special admin at my school saw the dip in grades and sounded the alarm. He started meeting with me once a week during lunch to just to hold space, create a game plan to recover my GPA, and encourage me to keep writing. His help truly saved my life and set me up for success even though I was too young to realize that.

But I abandoned writing quickly. And honestly, reading too. I ate up the starving artist propaganda, the idea that creative people can’t make money or survive. Forget reading if it’s not maybe 1-2 business books a year my workplace recommends. No time for personal hobbies when there’s emails to be responded to. This was also pre-Substack and before all the platforms we have today. But that love for writing stayed with me, buried deep in my subconscious.

I told myself I needed a degree that would land the quickest, highest-paying job. Honestly, not a bad strategy. Since I had to take on my own college loans, and I was first-gen with no mentors to guide me, I actually made a pretty smart decision. It was the overdoing it that got me. Between full-time school, multiple part-time jobs, and whatever time I had left filled with partying, I was burning the candle at every end.

I was living a double life: ultra-responsible to reconcile the huge financial risk I’d taken on by going to college, while also trying to escape the cycle of financial dependency on abusive husbands; a cycle that runs deep in my family. And partying my nervous system to destruction to cope with the pressure. In the process, I was killing myself slowly and doing everything half-assed. So, if college wasn’t “the best years of your life,” just know it wasn’t mine either.

The best years of my life are now: my mid-to-late 20s.

I took a risk by talking openly about the flaws in corporate America, the lack of leisure time in our culture, and our obsession with tying identity to productivity.

And somewhere in that process, I realized:

1. I’m an author.

2. Being an author is not a “failure”.

Since announcing the book deal, a lot of people have asked if I always wanted to be a writer. And as I’ve refined my answer, the memories from high school started bubbling back up.

The truth is: I always wanted to write. I was just scared it wasn’t fancy and prestigious enough. Or productive enough. Or corporate pick-me enough to be taken seriously. Or that I would have to chose my passion over making enough money to survive. (As a kid, I actually thought I’d die if I wasn’t a girlboss - we’ll talk about that more in the book!)

In running away from that fear, I crashed and burned hard in an unfulfilling, hustle-driven tech career… which, ironically, brought me back to telling a story that’s worthy of being published.

So I’m very excited to announce that YOU ARE NOT YOUR JOB will be published in Summer 2027!

After careful consideration of all the major publishing houses (it was a hard choice because they were all amazing), I’ve decided to move forward with Simon Acumen, an imprint of Simon & Schuster. I love how they do business, and how they fully saw the vision for this book!

Just getting to this book deal has been a rollercoaster. So much imposter syndrome. Also, I haven’t suffered from creative blocks, if anything, I’ve had creative overwhelm. I have so many ideas I want to publish that the hardest part has been staying concise and on theme.

I want this book to be easy to read and emotionally resonant for the version of me who was stuck in a job she thought was her “dream,” while secretly miserable with no personality, using burnout as an identity.

You buy this book. It lives on your shelf, peeking into your Zoom calls like a little rebellion in hardcover form.
You read it on that one beach day you finally get off.
You think about it.
You noodle on it.
And the next time you hit a wall at work, you flip back to that one chapter, just to remember how to navigate it all.

This book will feel like having my career advice at your fingertips.

And yes, I’ll be sharing exclusives about my upbringing and career path! There’s a lot I haven’t told you yet. This book will be the intimate place where I open up about the things that shaped me into the Anti Work Girlboss you know (and hopefully love) today. I hope you see parts of yourself in these stories.

A huge thank you to my team at UTA!
To Rebecca Gradinger, my literary agent, who saw the vision before I did (and even came up with the brilliant title!). She’s the perfect mix of business-savvy and deeply curious. She challenges me, and I challenge her right back. It’s a dream collaboration.
To her assistant Madison Hernick, a total star in the making who’s going to do amazing things.
To my collaborator Alex Marshall, for guiding my manic thoughts into a clear and cohesive anti-work manifesto. You can always enjoy her work through her Substack.

Cheers to the greater Simon Acumen team!
And to my editor Kimberly Meilun, the perfect person to help shape this book. I couldn’t ask for a better fit.

Also, I wouldn’t be here without you.
The book is a huge reason why I started this Substack. And not to toot our own horn here, but you all making Substack a Substack Best Seller this February, the month before our planned publishmer meetings, absolutely elevated the opportunities I had access to. So thank you for saying yes to my writing way before you even knew the book was coming.

Now, is time to actually work on the book. I am loling at myself because I’ve been working on this proposal since my TEDx Talk. The actual work of this book has felt like such a far away task and now that it’s here I am still adjusting to the realization it’s go time.

Wish me luck on the next 8 months of writing! I still be here raging against the corporate machine on Substack so have no fear, regular scheduled programming is not interrupted.

And yes, you all will be the first to know when presale is available!