I know you want Money Honey

The Muse

I have a deep respect for the subject of this essay and want to introduce her with the dignity that she deserves. Self proclaimed girlboss, Denée Seaton is a successful freelancer and entrepreneur. She’s a multi-talented baddie and a crisp perspective that resonates with pride in the ears of other women seeking financial freedom. And even for those who already have access to that sort of freedom, Denée maintains the value-add brand of class, elegance and inevitably. Her success proves an inherent meritocratic charm that keeps many institutions happy and full, rubbing their bellies on the lie of earning it. But I digress.

Where I began to follow Denée’s journey was when I watched her video, you’d be hotter if you logged out. And I found… I agreed! In fact, resonating deeply : I stuck with her content, and took a vested interest in her character.

The creators that I watch on the internet are purposeful and curated. To differentiate learning and interaction from slop, I ignore the embarrassment of being accused of having a parasocial relationship, and invest in the dialogue. What can I really hear here?

I followed her on youtube, linkedin, and subscribed to her newsletter ( a decision that I soon regretted — no one wants to be advertised to right now, no one its a necessary evil I spend most of my online presence dodging )

The tone of her story consisted of reverence towards her career journey, and vulnerable reflections on who she has to become in order to get where she wants. She spurs and disciplines a delighted audience of women, bustling in the comments for a taste of the magic that Denée has.

I was with them! She is inspiring!

I invest in connections over content, and I am invested in her story line.

And in duality-

Gradually, I had soured to Denée’s content. It was not her fault entirely. I think I had simply lost the magic that the invitation of freelancing promised because I am aware of what it takes! I don’t want to spend ALL of my time building something in this exact moment; I'm in between school. I don’t want to have a baby you know what I mean? I’m not ready for that yet!

That’s not to say I don’t respect or think that freelancing is a good idea. Monetary independence that distinguishes you from the man and the monopoly is crucial. Consider it clocked.

But soon, I found that Denée’s voice became a guilty needling in my ear. Her tone had bittered. A sharp reminder to hustle, a reality check for those who have wandered off track. In that was a familiarity that I recognized. A familiar staleness that permeated my writing in the recent past: a desperation.

Oh lord, the killer of all creation. To forge a commodity. To sell.

It is also important to note that Denée is the founder of SheFreelances, which is a mini-course and online community that helps empower women and in her own words get you paid. Classic, I am open-minded, and she makes some great points. I credit her for providing me a vocabulary with money that I hadn’t grasped before. She desensitized conversations about avenues to financial freedoms that felt inaccessible to me before.

The Mutiny

Yet, despite my mentee-eager-co-author-of-the-internet-and our-future-world-energy, I understood quite quickly that I misunderstood our relationship on the internet. I am a customer. I am only consuming her content – and by proxy, through the model of her business I am a lead and a potential customer.

That is a very different relationship than the one I was attempting to create in my head. And I am challenging that now, out of some kind of respect from one powerful autonomous woman to another powerful autonomous woman.

My unshakable admiration grappled with my politic. If I had this ability to cultivate wealth as a power to hone ( which i can ) would I do it this way?

As I began to digest the economic model of her work, in the time when I was studying her career journey, and the lessons and the wisdom and the power Denée took to move (this is what she sells) I started to grow… contemplative of our future, and the buy-in I had earlier invested.

Denée provides a model of a new success to watch develop rapidly. She pivots like a dancer to the tune of demand. Alongside her course changes are journal entries and breadcrumbs of authenticity that are scattered across her platform; and I followed them to find that the story led me here.

After about two months of following Denée, her success had skyrocketed. As I’m writing this, she has amounted to nearly 50k subscribers on youtube. She shares her thoughts on how money and the abundance of it, is the ultimate freedom. ( With nuance )

I’m with her!

But I don’t know. I don’t know!

Denée’s business model is not something new, but it does take on a novel packaging that transfixed me. Ultimate mastery of skill, fluent in the tongue of the merchants, building a small but sustainable empire. All of that wrapped in the pretty pink bow packaging. The hyperfemininity of it… the hustle… the minimalism.

The….

the….

Theee GIRLBOSS!!!

The Magnet

The new-age mercenary took my interest. Denée was a standout amongst a trend I had noticed of many. There has been a bloom in this archetype of — beautiful, financially secure, self-actualized women who have come across my attention for the past four months . Where did they come from all of the sudden? I don’t know, the algorithm was fed good input. ( cheeky amirite?)

Alongside this favored archetype, finding its moment on the big screen, is what I think : something deeper stirring within the collective spirit but that’s for another piece.

I was seeing a recurring publicity of women that carry themselves like matriarchs. Beings of power, creation, harmony and hearth. Although they are young and reminded me quite of a reflection of how I saw myself : what I noticed was another avenue, an access to an interaction of power.

Money.

Money is in abundance and in this moment she has found a channel into it, like many others have through the same wayline. A gate in the trimmed hedge maze. I wonder where it will lead?

Though ye old lancing is nothing new: it does take grit to take on. I must admit that Denée does come off like she’s also the built-different type, she has tenacity and also an alchemical uncanny ability to transform her ideas into material reality. I have to give her credit where it is due.

I watched her do it. Denée creates worlds.

And it made me think about autonomy.

Autonomy is something that I intuit like my mother tongue – that is, a language that I was not taught at infancy, and am now realizing I have to teach to myself, whose knowledge resides deep within me somewhere. That journey is one that many young women go through. What is transformative about this post-war ego death is you emerge as a phoenix. And in that newness and youth, drunk on the cycle's restart, you can, if attempted with intention, learn the language of autonomy - the vessel that can carry all possibilities.

Therefore, my choice to do something absolutely crazy like leave my ex-boyfriend were the same absolutely mind melting things that I could have never thought possible before. It’s the same choice to get money. Once a certain amount of freedom ( a privilege among many ) is gained, there is infinite lateral movement because the momentum you took is translatable universally regardless of direction. I am young, single, queer, lucky, educated and loved. These are all privileges that are harnessable to enact impact on others in my community. Money may be a vessel; one of them - but it is unquestionably one.

To make money is to make new worlds, it is to do something that did not exist before you decided it to exist.

So what with that goldmine of power, to transform your unique presence, your unique input, your humanity into the currency – what else could we use those elements to make?

We have the entire crafting table at our fingertips. So what am I asking?

Disclaimers before i explore this point :

This is within reason; there are still constraints on most of us in some capacity - we must be adaptable and use what resources, including time and other privileges we have to MOVE with intention

This is a callout that is not just for the women entrepreneurial girlboss characters, this is simply a reaction to the absolute awe that I have for women that are able to do amazing things.

This applies to absolutely everyone. No one is exempt from my preaching. Including myself.

I also am tired of waiting for a world to be built that honors all people, no I cannot end colossal evils happening cross-continentally, but I can start on a local level and foster and meet the needs of those in my community who have the least, because they are owed it for living because they are my blood.

In Denée’s most recent video where she describes one of her monthly career pivots ( relatable, I’ve been giddy with figuring out what I am going to do with my life ) and in it she describes some of the relationships that were sacrificed to her creative demon. That creative demon was creating money. Capitalism- you know what it’s alright i’ll drop it.

Anyways, Also relatable, my own substack after a misaligned decision tasted stale with that same desperation that I was picking up from Denee. Maybe projection? But more likely? The farce of performance.

But when she insists in this video, a value of living in true harmony, in integrity and in authenticity to your wants and needs – it rings hollowly, the throng of individualism vibrating itself into a stupor on the walls of physical reality outside of ourselves.

Don’t get me wrong. Denée mentions how important her family is to her, her friends and how she wants genuine connections and the lived raw experiences that create and nurture friendship, propelling it beyond the superficial state. But that is not what serving the community looks like. It is the start. It is a part.

But it is not the end. We owe to our microworlds of course, and we owe to our friends. And in the room for nuance, I offer that it also is not the naive illusion of curing all evil. It is an invitation for a power exchange in between that protects a larger populus, an interconnected community – especially that can benefit from strong women and takes autonomous control of societal roles by accepting their full power within it.

I understand that we all work within limitations. Within constraints. But we all have some freedoms, some privileges and some negative space to occupy and experiment within.

Try it out.

I am curious to see what happens.

The Muscle

There is a fire in our bellies that is expressed through the beauty of creation, of new worlds. New possibilities. The shape of this potential can appear as projects, art, inventions, developments in the ideation of progress, teaching. We birth things. And that building process, comes in the language of money, which is why it feels so organic and intuitive and right when you do hit that flow and those shots of dopamine.

It's our nature. So it’s so organic and natural for these plethora, never ending barrage of growth-projects, expanding our internal portfolio and googleable net worth to be pursued.

It can make sense and can feel intuitive to keep ourselves occupied with ever expanding goals that give us the dopamine of creation. I relate to the thrill of a successful completion.

And while I am speaking directly to my fellow women here, this does not really only apply to women. But I think we do have that innate craving. Stronger than I think the other does, but really there is no set binary here. ( I just know my uterus was involved when writing this essay )

I also don’t believe this is solely Denée’s responsibility, or women’s, or any other one group. I just happen to be able to speak within the woman group as a woman — so I will. I don’t want it to be a callout, I am offering an invitation.

Girl, I know you don’t want to hear me tell you what to do, so take it not as a you should but instead, a you can if you wanted to!

The Map

To balance out this weighty expectation, I really pondered over a third archetype to contrast the current with; the embodiment of the ideal to reach. The truth is I don’t have that answer. I am still discovering it. The third person may have very well existed long before and may require a mad-scientist mishmash of all the wisdom that has been denied and forgotten and repressed by actors of imperialism. The third archetype is what I believe will cultivate something new. Something collaborative. Something uplifting and something democratic.

There is an ability within us that is so organically all-encompassing, a strength so unknowable to the weak that they hide the stories of our greatest in sheer terror of the shadows that we are capable of casting, in power, in abundance. Our harmony is so great that it terrifies the evil Imperialist Man. We are returning to our sacred spaces, we have the capability to create and nurture life. We were made for this.

And I am curious and invigorated by the potentiality in what we can build if we use this unstoppable lifeforce, towards being creative in our worldbuilding, brave in our resistance towards conformity and a defiance of systems.

What kind reader, you must be wondering, do I want you to take away from this piece? If you’ve made it this far, evidently you can feel it too. The shift. I suppose I want you to remember the curiosity; to join me in finding the third archetype.

I’ll leave you with a journaling question, I’ll do it with you :

What would we do with power if it wasn’t in translation of capital?

What would you do with your money if you weren’t allowed to use any of it?

Thankyou for reading

Akhila