We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Rachel Jitsawat. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Rachel below.

Rachel, appreciate you joining us today. To kick things off, we’d love to hear about things you or your brand do that diverge from the industry standard.

I’m writing my first memoir, and instead of completing the manuscript for submission or pitching it to a publisher, I’ve been publishing it in pieces online as a serial on my Substack.

I’ve been a stay-at-home mom and homemaker since 2013, with the occasional side job here and there: home cleaning, administrative work, and even getting caught up in an MLM before I knew what an MLM was. Yes, these were the side hustles; my main job from the moment I quit my paid job was raising my children full-time.

I have always been a creative, a storyteller–one of those traits that plant in your soul from childhood and never dislodges, because it is the root of who you are. I went on a very windy road that became entwined with the forests of motherhood, trying to figure out how to satisfy my creativity with the possibility of bringing in some income to supplement my husband’s. I ran a YouTube channel for several years, and just when I was ramping up to earn revenue, the policies changed and the goalpost I needed to cross to qualify for monetization was moved football fields away.

Then that MLM took five years of me, pulling time away from YouTube and disguising graphic designs of flyers, social media posts, and presentations for my “team” as creative satisfaction (I was scarcely compensated for my graphic design work). I quit both YouTube and the MLM. My focus shifted to creating troop meetings for Girl Scouts because something possessed me to believe that being a troop leader to both of my daughters’ troops was one of my callings on my path through parenting. I never kept track, but I imagine thousands of volunteer hours went into my girls’ troops over the five years I focused on them. At the same time, I was consistently volunteering for the PTO of my girls’ school.

I had spread myself thin, like when you’ve reached the bottom of the butter tub and there’s nothing left to spread except little lumps and pieces. Yes, the cause was noble–I was contributing to the growth of my children. This was part of my full-time job as a mother.

But I had been expending exorbitant amounts of labor for no compensation. As happens with so many mothers, I had become a hollowed version of myself in pursuit of what I thought a mother was supposed to be, and I had disregarded any dreams I once had.

I finally decided to stop giving my labor away for free. Though I believe there is much value in volunteering for good causes, I subsequently believe that women, particularly mothers, are exploited through many of these volunteer systems. I pulled back on my commitments, focused on my health, and on a wild whim, I pulled my iPad out and began to write one day. I hadn’t written in almost a decade. The day I began to write, I didn’t want to stop, and I wanted to take it further.

I discovered Substack shortly after, an online platform for readers and writers. The beauty of the platform is that you can support writers you love directly by paying them a monthly subscription fee; the platform takes a small fee of whatever you make, whenever you make it. After promising myself that I would always try to be compensated for my work, I found this to be a wonderful opportunity. I do plan to publish my memoir traditionally one day, but for now, I’m enjoying the slow and quick of it–I get chapters out quickly (about one per month), but the book is being compiled slowly. I’ve been on Substack for a little over a year now, and I’m enjoying the process.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

My main focus currently is producing my memoir, The Crush Chronicles which, as mentioned earlier, I’m releasing serially on my Substack. The memoir, as you can deduce, is about all the crushes I have encountered throughout my life and what I took from each experience. I was a daughter of the Air Force and moved often. Although it was difficult to be constantly uprooted and moved from state to state, it granted me the opportunity to meet a larger array of people than I would have been able to had we stayed in one place for the entirety of my childhood.

Chapters of the memoir are released once per month, but I release one creative nonfiction piece each month as well. The creative nonfiction is not related to The Crush Chronicles but is still in the memoir flavor because I usually write about instances that occur in this season of my life as a 39-year-old, Asian American millennial and mother.

In addition to my written works, I recently launched my new podcast at the end of October. It is a companion to my Crush Chronicles series, but although each episode is based on a chapter of the memoir, the focus is not on my story but on that of my podcast guest’s. It has been a really fun first season discussing crushes and, by extension, the trials of coming of age with great people from different backgrounds and walks of life. Like my writing, podcast episodes are released every other week, so anyone who subscribes to my Substack will get something new and creative from me once a week, scheduled for Wednesdays.

I hope that people can come to my Substack and feel transported to those giddying days of encountering a crush. I am not going to deny that it is difficult for me to share the stories that I do. At first, I was scared to share anything at all, not because writing a memoir is an incredibly vulnerable experience, which it is, but because I had doubts that anyone would take the subject seriously. I wasn’t sure that anyone would want to read about something that at first thought may be considered juvenile.

After conducting the interviews for the first season of my podcast, though, I realized that there is fun in looking back, in enjoying the nostalgia, and most importantly, that these experiences are universal. Yes, I’m sharing my personal experiences, but I’m just getting readers warmed up. From my stories, people’s memories will wash to the forefront of their minds, and they can chronicle their own crushes. They can reflect on what they learned from their own experiences with love interests of long ago because these things do tell us a lot about ourselves if we are willing to look back and pry into our past selves.

Because I’m a woman approaching middle age who is willing to revisit my Teenage and Twenties Selves in this way, I think that sets me apart from other memoirists. I’m writing about a relatively lighthearted subject, though some more serious themes will thread themselves into each story at certain times, themes that I didn’t realize were obstacles I faced until I went back to examine these situations.

I am so proud to have come this far, and to have even returned to writing in the first place. When I was in college, I wanted to double major in journalism and film. I wasn’t allowed to because I had chosen a workload that was so intense that a double major like this was not allowed. I didn’t want to choose between the two; I have always been passionate about both. I chose film, deciding to head down the path of editing. But then I got married, decided to have children, and I changed course. My YouTube channel was an effort to fulfill the video-editing plan that I never accomplished. (I had applied to several film schools after I earned my associate’s degree, but was never accepted.) It wasn’t until I was inspired to write that one day that I realized how long it had been since I’d written creatively. When my one-year milestone on Substack arrived, I was surprised at how quickly it felt it had come, but I was also happy that I’ve stayed consistent, continuing to put out content each week.

Along with consistently publishing online, I was proud to announce in February my first publication in an anthology, Royal Blood.Magic Wand. My short nonfiction piece titled “Magic Wand” was accepted by a publisher named Free Spirit. Holding that book in my hands and witnessing my name printed on the page of a real, solid book was a milestone I never imagined I would see. It was my first piece accepted by a publisher, and I do not plan it to be my last.

Do you think there is something that non-creatives might struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can shed some light?

I may be speaking from a vulnerable place, but non-creatives underestimate how much creatives deserve to be paid for their work. It may be because I grew up in an era in which we had many stories about children who wanted to chase dreams despite the hardworking nature of their disapproving parents, but some people still think this way. Because artistic and creative jobs are seen as more fun and low labor, our work is perceived as easy and not worthy of reasonable compensation.

But work is work; just because we may not break literal sweats creating pieces to share with the world does not mean we do not contribute to the wellbeing of society. Imagine a world without music, arts, or publications. If people stopped to truly imagine how quiet the world would be without music, how bland our existence would be without art, how unimaginative the world would be without the exchange of ideas through the written word, and therefore how life would be stripped down to the bare bones of existing, you then understand how creatives contribute to a side of us that is still very much overlooked in terms of our wellbeing–our mental health.

Unfortunately, artists and creatives are vastly paid piece by piece. It could take eight hours to craft a piece of art, but we could get paid a fraction of what a minimum wage would be. We take it because it’s better than nothing; we work “real jobs” because we need to pay the bills, but we deserve more.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

The most rewarding aspect of being a creative is finally getting all these ideas out of my head and into the physical world. It took decades for me to give myself permission to focus on my writing. To see the black and white of my words published each week lifts a weight off my shoulders in a way. Like Dumbledore removing his thoughts from the Pensieve (#transrights), I can take my thoughts and ideas out and examine them on the page, edit and decorate them, and share them with others. In doing so, it makes room for more ideas and thoughts, or even collaborations with others, which I’m doing now with my podcast.

My following is not large at the moment, so a goal of mine is to expand my reach, which is something I look forward to doing as I water and nourish my Substack. I’m just at the beginning of my journey, and I plan to enjoy the long, winding road I’m on and the characters I will meet along the way.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://racheljitsawat.wixsite.com/jitsie
• Instagram: @racheljitsawat
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/racheljitsawat
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@JitsieTube
• Other: https://linktr.ee/RachelJitsawat

Image Credits

Royal Blood.Magic Wand book cover: Free Spirit Publisher