I've Achieved My Dream Career... Now What?

I am officially a Certified Sex Coach, after paying my last monthly tuition on May 21, 2024 at 8am. I did it. I did the thing; I have achieved my dream career. Yes, I have a bit of debt, but I can easily let time go by and let the passive income do its thing. I have ordered business cards twice and now that summer is in full gear, I have an advantage of living in San Francisco. For example, there was a lot of foot traffic last weekend and it happened to be Bay to Breakers. I took the opportunity to staple some Überlube samples (a little goes a long way) to my business card. I could only go up to 8 in terms of the Ziploc bag size, but only 4 remained. The following weekend (May 24th-26th), my fellow queer neighbor loves throwing parties and I could hear the rustling of the bags with joy. I don't care if they took it for just the lube because there have been so many times where I have found a business card whilst cleaning and it was actually fruitful. Prior to my decision to evaluate my relationship with social media, I was conflicted on whether or not to keep my business local or something much broader. My business is forever-changing and that’s my decision because it is my business. However, I'm starting to see the negatives of having my motto be, “my business is personal,” but I can't help but feel the tug to share my stories because my stories (AKA my life and self-advocacy) has made such an impact on survivors and I love fighting for them. 

Activism and assertiveness has always been present in my family, whether they identify as activists or not. My father figure/brother spoke up for his elementary school class field trip after changing the field trip’s itinerary with a lesser value than what the students’ parents paid for. His strong elementary school-aged self went straight to the head of the school, expressed his peers’ complaints, he won and all the money was given back. My mother started working at age 6 and my father catered at the Hilton for over 15 years. Speaking of my father, he's also a person with extreme self-control (when he wants to be). I've heard the story of how my family found out that my mother's little fetus self has a vagina, they were ecstatic. Read that again… doesn't that sound incredibly creepy? Anyways! My father quit cigarettes cold turkey, unknowingly repeating his actions on my 3rd birthday, also vowing to part ways with my milk bottle because I thought I was too old. A self-aware 3-year-old? That was me!    

My struggle now has a lot more to do with separating and balancing my business because I work remotely. My work days currently consists of the following and in order; I sleep no later than 10pm/11pm, wake up around 6:30am and immediately get out of bed, silence while I do my bathroom routine (I do squats while brushing my teeth and affirmations in the mirror to hype myself up for the day), make coffee or matcha and grab a banana or apple, gather my crystals and put on meditative music while shuffling my tarot deck, ask any question and pull a card, take a picture and start journaling for 10 minutes or at least when the meditation music ends. I'm ready for my day. I check my bank and credit accounts afterwards, check my emails, then get some work done. 

“But Ilah, what do you do?!” I am trying to run and succeed in my business because I don't like rules. Rules are restrictive to my growth and I would like to implement my own guidelines as to how I work. I like being in control and additionally, my disabled body has tried to work under someone else and I'm so tired of not being heard. My body (realistically, no human body) should be working this much because we deserve rest and pleasure. I deserve pleasure because running this business gives me so much intellectual and social pleasure that I do not care what people think anymore! Being a sex coach in public allows me to be one the most interesting people in the room because sex coaching is still relatively new and unheard of. I enjoy the looks on each individual face because I'm an attention whore, if you haven't noticed.  

All of these things are a part of me; achieving my dream career, my family, culture, people I surround myself with, and lastly, my life experiences, past, and trauma. I wish real life experiences were validated as skills on resumes because, I may not have the professionally paid experiences, but I have thorough experience navigating being who I am in society and in the public: mentally and physically disabled, chronically ill, self-aware, much more patient, and convincing others that life matters. I am speaking from a privileged position, but I am here because of the hard work of everyone who got me here, especially myself. No, I don't want to live a “normal” life. I want my life to be extraordinary and I want to be remembered. I want my legacy story to move beyond my death and make history.