I Started My Own Business

Entrepreneurship: The activity of organizing, managing, and assuming the risks of a business enterprise.

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In February of 2026, I enrolled in an online self-employment course with Business Works of Central Alberta: a comprehensive six-month course that teaches about the ins and outs of running a business. The end goal is to, of course, launch the business of your choice, armed with knowledge and techniques to help make said business a success. And the thing is, I haven't spent my whole life dreaming of entrepreneurship. Actually, most of my adult years have just been spent attempting to get by in a world that bases my worth off of how much I contribute financially. I don't have talents in fields that can be monetized. I'm inconsistent. Some days, executive dysfunction makes it impossible to get anything done. I've never really had a great lifelong passion or dream - not since adulthood, anyway, when my only goal has just been survival.

I guess, after awhile, simple survival becomes unsustainable. The monotony of spending every day doing the same things, the years of struggling to put food on the table, the pressure of trying to impress managers who couldn't care less about you: that's not how humans are meant to live. Earth gave us the capacity to do everything: food to hunt, water to drink, plants to grow, shelters to build. Prehistoric humans lived off the earth with no concept of war, poverty, or homelessness. Some modern-day tribes still live like this: blissfully unaware of the atrocities of the outside world. Sometimes I envy them.

My last real job was back in 2021, when I worked in a fast food restaurant. Then I moved cities, and I haven't worked since. Maybe it's for lack of effort; I apply for a bunch of jobs, attend a couple of interviews, and never hear back. The thing about employment gaps is that the more they expand, the more employers look at you as a liability. In my early twenties, I probably wouldn't have understood the levels of mistreatment that occur in corporate settings - but I'm thirty one now, and I can't bear the thought of spending thirty more years working like a dog, providing for corporations that wouldn't care if I dropped dead. And for years, I've had a lingering sense of parental guilt: I'm not trying hard enough to make money to give my son a good childhood.

Life is not about money. Logically, I understand that. It's about making memories, creating relationships, and doing things you love. The problem is that I don't love many things anymore, and finding joy in little things takes a conscious effort that I can't find the motivation for. I often tell myself that life would be easier if I was neurotypical: if I were charismatic and personable rather than awkward and quiet. Maybe that's true. But I'm not neurotypical, and wishing I was won't magically make it so. I spent most of my twenties wallowing in self-pity, wishing it wasn't so hard to find a job and contribute to the world. I'm getting too old for that now.

In early May, I became a small business owner when I launched my shop: an e-commerce site for history buffs. I'm not good at art, or technology, or housekeeping, or socially oriented jobs -- but I'm good at writing, researching, and putting information together. I'm not a history "expert". I'm just a neurodivergent person with a lifelong obsession with history and anthropology. I make or collect historical items, and I sell them with papyrus scrolls, filled with stories about where they came from. My shop is filled with hand-drawn maps of ancient civilizations, alphabet prints of extinct languages, handmade jewelry, runestones that imitate those of Old Scandinavia, artifacts from ancient empires, books, literature, and historical busts.

In the beginning, when I first began planning the concept of my business, I was excited and motivated - but, as other neurodivergent people know, motivation isn't something that's constant. I don't have a consistent schedule of things to do. I accomplish tasks in sporadic episodes of hyper-focus: setting aside current tasks to start ones that are more interesting. And like everything else, even the most exciting hobbies eventually feel like a chore. I continue to make social media posts that nobody sees, and pay for ads that no one cares about, and add inventory to my shop that no one buys, because I don't know what else to do. People say "you started a business, and that's the hardest part! You should be proud!" I don't know what pride feels like. I am either successful, or I am a disappointment.

Life is work. You don't understand that as a kid, or maybe even as a young adult. Life is work, but I'd rather spend it working for myself than being taken advantage of by someone else. The hardest thing, so far, about trying to work for myself is finding an audience. I know the right people exist out there in the world somewhere, but the world's a huge place and everyone's busy trying to figure out their own lives. That's just how it is. Everyone is too distracted by technology or politics or their own problems to worry about what other people are doing. It takes time. Even billion-dollar companies started somewhere. I know it takes time, but there's discouragement that comes with getting lots of traffic and hardly any sales.

I worry that, no matter how much effort I put into advertising and marketing, nobody will care. My self-employment course will end in October, and I'll no longer receive any educational benefits, and I'll be worse off financially than I was at the start. That's pessimistic. I've been a pessimist far too long to understand anything else. People cannot sustain themselves anymore. People cannot afford to spend money on luxuries they don't need - they're too busy trying to afford groceries and rent. Most people don't want to be rich: just comfortable enough to be able to live without financial worries. Outside of childhood, I don't remember the last time I lived without financial worries. I want to grow my child's savings account enough that he doesn't ever have to know what it feels like to struggle to survive.

Since May, I've expanded my mailing list to fourteen subscribers, which doesn't feel like a lot, but small progress is still progress, I guess. Over the past couple weeks, I've been trying to kind of market myself, which basically is a full-time job at this point. I've been so conditioned by capitalism that I feel I'm wasting my life if I don't sit in an office for eight hours a day. The hardest part of marketing is communicating with people - I'm very bad at that. But it's like I tell my son all the time: sometimes you just have to do stuff you don't like. So I keep developing my website, and sending my marketing emails, and making social media posts, and hoping that someday, all the effort and stress will pay off.