This month, my fractional editing role expanded to 20 hours per week, which means that even accounting for self-employment taxes, I’ve replaced my take-home teacher pay.

That’s right—I’m a fully transitioned teacher.

(Ok, I kinda can’t believe I just wrote that.)

Of course, there’s no official benchmark for when you’re a fully transitioned teacher. Is it the day you quit? When you secure a new full-time job? When you replace or exceed your teaching salary? Or maybe when you finally let your teaching credential expire?

My personal target was to match my take-home teacher pay. I’ve done that, but the change feels bigger than just the number in my bank account. It feels like I’ve crossed a threshold. I’ve filed for my LLC, applied for a fully funded MFA, applied to some other opportunities, had a couple new pieces published. I feel myself stepping into the next phase of my life and turning away from not just the teacher identity, but the transitioning teacher identity.

What I’m moving toward feels exciting and expansive. And in the meantime, I’m enjoying the shit out of my new role. It’s remote, flexible, and family-friendly. I’m doing work I love and that I’ve always wanted to do, while also having time for my own creative pursuits and my family. I get to work from home, in my sweatpants, and pee whenever I want. (That will never get old.)

I intentionally didn’t title this post, “Here’s How I Replaced My Teacher Salary In Six Months, And You Can Too (PS: Buy My E-Book).” One, I don’t have an e-book. But more importantly, I didn’t follow any recipe or formula or hack. I feel like my transition has mostly been the result of luck, good timing, and the support of friends and family.

That being said, there are a few things that I think really helped me in my transition. Since most of you are transitioning teachers, I wanted to share them.

Having A Really Clear Vision

One of the first things I did when I started considering resigning was to write out my vision.

You can check out the full post here, but the short version is that I followed daily writing exercises to create a vision of what I wanted my career and life to look like. I was instructed to forget whether what I wrote seemed reasonable or even possible—the point of the exercise was to think big. To ask myself—if my life could be anything at all, what would it look like?

I wrote that I wanted remote, flexible, part-time work writing and editing. I wanted a sustainable and enjoyable work-life balance. I wanted to contribute towards long-term savings, go on date nights, and travel internationally with the family once per year. I wanted to have dedicated time to work on my novel-in-progress and to pursue literary opportunities.

Six months ago, this felt like a ridiculous ask—too big, too indulgent, too unrealistic and impractical.

Today, this is basically what my life looks like. Have I gotten everything in my vision? Of course not (hello, published novel) but I’ve attained some of the key items and made big strides toward others.

As manifest-y as this sounds, I don’t think a vision always works like a Christmas list. The thing it really did for me was serve as a guiding light. I didn’t waste time applying for roles I didn’t really want. Because I’d gotten clarity on where I wanted to go, I was able to focus all my arrows on that target.

Being Open To Contract Work

Biggest disclaimer of all disclaimers: This is a huge, huge privilege that I only had because my husband’s job provides our family with a baseline income and health benefits. Many transitioning teachers don’t have this luxury and I recognize the enormous privilege of my situation.

That being said, being open to contract work really expedited my career transition. For one, the current job market is tiiiiight, and even well-qualified candidates are taking longer to find full-time positions. The fact that I wasn’t looking to immediately secure full-time work opened me up to a lot of possibilities. Some of them weren’t great; I edited college essays for an edtech company, earning about $17/hour. But I learned a lot about what I wanted and didn’t want.

Two, contract work can be a great way to build experience and portfolio pieces that lead to more long-term work. My current role grew out of a freelance contract.

On a bigger note, teaching is such a bubble that we often don’t know the possibilities that lay outside of it. I suffered from a severe lack of imagination when I was in the classroom. Now that I’m moving in the freelance world, I’m seeing how much work is really out there.

There are more ways to do this than just having a partner with health insurance. I’ve spoken with several teachers who continued to substitute a few days a week while pursuing freelance and contract work the other days. I’ve seen people post on forums about working retail jobs at Starbucks or Target for health benefits while they explore other options. So it may be more of an option than you think.

Leaning Into Connections

The second biggest privilege in my career transition was that I had contacts in the writing world—people who knew me, had worked with me, could vouch for me, and let me know about opportunities.

But these people would have never known to do these things if I hadn’t asked.

In interview after interview, folks featured in this newsletter have shared that networking was crucial to their career transitions. As uncomfortable as it was, I had to put myself out there. There were two successful writer-editors I knew who I was totally intimidated by and terrified to ask on a coffee chat. Guess what? I did it anyway. There was a freelance writer I didn’t even know who posted on LinkedIn about doing pay-it-forward coffee chats; I took her up on it.

I didn’t always get work from these conversations, but each one taught me something, showed more of what was possible, and helped me to dial in my own vision.

“I have one client who pays the majority of bills,” the LinkedIn writer told me. “Then I have the rest of the time to pursue other clients or do my own writing.”

Ooh, I want to do that!

“I’ve structured my life so I can make as much money as I can in 20 hours of work per week,” one of the intimidating acquaintances told me. “The rest of the time I spend on my novel.”

Yes, I want that!

Making these connections and having these conversations also helped me to feel less isolated. The career transition process can be lonely and bewildering, so talking to people already doing the thing I wanted to do served as a bright spot.

Getting Reeeeeally Clear On The Numbers

Since I wasn’t making the leap directly into another full-time gig, I decided to get really clear on exactly how much I needed to make, how much I wanted to make, and what my hourly rates would be.

The first budget was easy if tedious. I looked back over three months’ worth of spending and averaged out all the categories: groceries, transportation, childcare, etc. I identified my family’s bare-bones budget, the exact amount I would have to make each month in order to not dip into the red.

Next came the fun one: my ideal budget. I wrote down everything I wanted to be able to do: go on date nights and family trips, have a bimonthly house cleaner, contribute to long-term savings, get my nails done every now and then. Then I totaled out how much those things would actually cost. The number scared me. I was told that, like the vision writing, the point of this exercise was to think big, to get out of the scarcity mindset and into one of abundance.

With those two numbers in mind, I then had to determine what I needed to actually earn. Because I was going into contract 1099 work, I needed to identify an hourly rate—a process that, coming from education, felt confounding.

First I took the bare-bones budget, multiplied it by a third to account for self-employment taxes, then divided it by the number of hours I wanted to work. That was my absolute minimum.

Next, I took that ideal budget and did the same thing. My first calculation seemed absurdly unattainable and like waaaay too much for a newly transitioning teacher to ask for. But a friend in the writing world told me that not only was the rate reasonable, I should actually raise it to the industry standard. I was doubtful but I decided to use it as an exercise in self-worth.

From all this, I identified three hourly rates: my ideal, my acceptable, and my bare bones. I used these numbers not as rigid benchmarks but as guidelines.

Stepping Into My Vision

Now, I could go on and on about the emotional and psychological things I’ve learned in these last six months—self-worth, imposter syndrome, fear of success. But those are other subjects for other posts.

Which brings me to this newsletter. Since I’m working more paid hours, I’ll have less time to devote to this newsletter. Even though my role is only 20 hours per week, a big part of my vision is to maintain dedicated time to work on my literary writing. I’ve backburnered it long enough; I’m challenging myself to really value and center creativity in my life. Oh, and I’m also raising two young children.

Therefore, I’m reducing the publication schedule to once per week. Really, twice per week is INSANE for a free, ad-free, one-woman-show publication. The further I move away from teaching, the further I’m moving away from the pace of teaching and the more I’m wanting rest and balance in my life.

Rather than expanding and monetizing, I want this newsletter to serve as a portfolio piece for my editorial work, where I can demonstrate content strategy and audience engagement. So click those links! Refer your friends! And of course, you can always toss some change in the tip jar too.

I’m still here and rooting for you; I’m just also prioritizing my own vision too.