“There is never a point at which people will stop doubting you”: The Postscript ep. 2

A personal note from me, with an update on my move to Croatia + a behind-the-scenes on my conversations with Victoria, Anna Lena, and Savala

Apr 30, 2026

Each month, between interviews, I hop on the mic to share a new episode of The Postscript: a new section of Women of Letters I’ve been working on which features a life update from me + a behind-the-scenes look at my conversations with our recent guests—in this episode, Victoria Redel, Anna Lena Feunekes, and Savala Nolan.

I talk about finally having my tickets to Croatia booked (!) and the search for an apartment, New York Magazine’s article on how much money people make, the importance of introducing structure into your routine when you’re making a major life change, why the myth of the straight career path is damaging, the wrong thing to say when someone shares big news with you, the way to get closer to a ‘yes’ from the gatekeepers standing in the way of a goal, & my best advice for how to improve your writing.

Hello, and welcome back! I’m so excited—this is the second episode of The Postscript, which is a new section of Women of Letters I’ve been working on where each month I hop on the mic for a one-on-one life update from me and a behind-the-scenes look at my conversations with our most recent guests. The first episode went out at the end of March (you can read it here), and I’m planning to share these after every few interviews, or about once a month.

(I’m only going to transcribe a little bit of each Postscript episode in the Substack posts that go out—like this one—while the full episodes will be available in the podcast feeds.)

Okay, so: life updates since last time. One of the things I was talking about when we last spoke was the move to Croatia, and how that was coming up. That has now been finalized: I have my tickets booked (!), and I’ll be flying out in a couple of weeks. By the time I do the next episode of The Postscript, I’ll be reporting to you live from Croatia.

I’m really excited; it feels really good to have finally put this on the calendar.

What was funny, though, was once I had booked the tickets and was sharing the update with the people in my life... Many, if not the majority of responses I received, were very positive. They were like, “Oh, my gosh—that’s so exciting! I can’t wait to hear more!” Really positive and supportive.

But then there were the—I guess, generously, we can call them more neutral, or maybe cautious responses, where a good number of the people I spoke to were like, “Oh, wow—you’re really doing it.” Or, “It’s good that you’re doing this now, because you can always come back if things don’t work out.” And I was surprised by that, both at the surprise I received from them and the lack of support behind their reactions.

I’ve actively and openly been talking about doing this for years, as well as planning towards it in really concrete ways, so I just did not know what to say in those moments. It was like, “What about all of that did not indicate to you that, yes: this is actually a thing that is happening?”

I don’t know. It was a bit sad to experience that, because it felt like, “Oh: did you not think that I could do it? Did you not think that I was someone who was working towards the achievement of their goals and capable of seeing them through? What was the disconnect that made you surprised that I was moving forward with this?”

Another thing I wanted to talk about, before we get to talking about our last few interviews, is one of the big New York Magazine articles that recently came out (which I loved!). The title of this piece was “What do you do and what do you make?” If you haven’t yet seen this, it was centered around a series of anonymous interviews with 60 New Yorkers where they were asking them about their jobs: what is their job title, what do they actually do for that job, and how much do they make every year?

A lot of people have been commenting, in response to that article, on things like, “I can’t believe this career makes this much money.” Maybe the biggest example of this was that one of the people they interviewed works as a dog walker in Manhattan, and they make $92,000 a year from it. Another one in this category was a person whose job title is ‘Fashion Substacker,’ and they make $275,000 a year.

Everyone was commenting, being like, “I can’t believe this person makes $300,000 a year doing that job.” And, sure: one basic component of that article, and why it’s been so buzzy, is because of that kind of clickbait-adjacent interest around finding out what people make. But, to me, what the more interesting story was—and what more so resonated with me—was the awareness it offered around how many different kinds of jobs and professions there are that you just would not normally think about.

What I’ve really been struck by, as I’ve moved through my own career, is just how limited an aperture of possibility I had as I was growing up and making some of my early decisions around work: “What do I want to be when I grow up? What do I want to go to university for? What are the viable career paths?” There was such a limited sense of understanding that I had, and there were maybe only half a dozen job categories that I was conscious of as being a possible thing to do.

In the years since, I’ve come to realize that there are so many jobs that I didn’t even know were a job at the time when I was making those decisions. (And that, had I known about, I likely would have pursued instead of what I ultimately ended up doing.) What was also interesting to me, though, and what the article in New York Magazine really brought to the forefront, is…

This episode of The Postscript continues on the podcast. You can listen to the full bonus episode now—basically a 45-minute voice note from me 👩🏻‍💻—for free on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

woman of letters (n). an intellectually accomplished woman, esp. in literary, scientific, or artistic domains; in some cases, an author or a scholar; an expert.

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