Nobody’s taking voice lessons or any of the rest of that. We’re just working freelance, doing artistic, self-employed jobs, instead of getting minimum wage jobs. We all do what we need to do to get by. For us, I’m thankful we’ve so far been able to avoid going back to minimum wage.

For me, this means leading children’s programming at our library and freelance writing — like the writing you were just reading.

I’ve edited (and included a footnote about the edit) to make it clear our “artistic ventures” are our careers.