Illumination Writer Introduction

Jennifer Nelson: From Dog Groomer to Freelance Writer

My mental illness has given me a unique career path.

When I was a kid, I wanted to be one of two things when I grew up: a horse breeder or a writer. It’s been a long and winding path, but I’m finally living one dream as a freelance writer. I want to travel in the future, so horses are impractical at this point in my life.

Mental Illness Caused Me to Drop Out of College

In the spring of my sophomore year of college, I experienced my first severe depressive episode in what would eventually, many years later, be diagnosed as bipolar disorder.

I had experienced depression as an adolescent, but I never realized that it was unusual to spend all night staring at the red light on the smoke detector in my bedroom hoping that the house would catch on fire and kill me while I slept. In high school, my friends and I commonly said, “Life sucks and then you die,” so it never occurred to me to tell anybody that I wanted to die sooner rather than later.

Anyway, for no reason that I could figure out, I became extremely depressed shortly before spring break of my sophomore year in college. I couldn’t get out of bed, I was crying all the time, and I was gnawing on my fingers and knuckles (because chewing on your fingernails is gross).

I went to the counselor and eventually got a prescription for an antidepressant. After explaining everything to my professors, I got extensions on projects that I had missed and limped my way through that semester.

I tried to go back in the fall, but I wasn’t feeling much better. I had completed most of my general education classes and still couldn’t decide on a major. English? French? Communication? Something else entirely?

Since I couldn’t focus on my classes, I convinced my parents to let me drop out, just for one or two semesters while I figured out my life.

I tried to go back to college a couple of time, but I still don’t have a degree.

The Manic Episode that Led Me to Dog Grooming

The spring after I dropped out of college, I was working at a nursing home in my college town when I experienced my first manic episode. Well, technically it was hypomania, because I didn’t experience hallucinations, and my symptoms weren’t severe enough for me to end up in the hospital.

The thought came to me in the middle of the night: My purpose in life was to be a zookeeper!

Instead of sleeping, I spent countless hours researching what zookeepers do, how much money they make, what you need to do to become a zookeeper, and how I could make it happen considering how much debt I was in.

Here’s where I should mention that science in general and biology in particular were my weakest subjects in school. I took half a dozen Advanced Placement tests my junior and senior years of high school, and I passed five, allowing me to enter college with a full semester of credit. The one I didn’t pass? Biology.

So majoring in biology was unrealistic, and just goes to show the depths of my delusions of grandeur that I was dealing with.

Long story short, I went back to school for one semester and took biology and chemistry, became a volunteer at the Denver Zoo, and found any job I could get working with animals — as a dog bather at a PetSomething.

The Writing Groomer

After I had been a dog bather for about a year, PetSomething trained me to be a dog groomer. I quickly realized that my groomer coworkers made better money than the average zookeeper salary, grooming didn’t require a degree, groomers would always be in demand, I could go anywhere as a groomer, and majoring in biology to become a zookeeper would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, based on my one semester taking basic biology and chemistry.

About six years into my grooming career, I started a blog about my career and my mental health called The Writing Groomer. I had hoped I could earn a supplemental income from it, but my Google AdSense account has still only grossed $91, and Google doesn’t pay out until you’ve earned $100.

I blogged off and on for several years, but without any income and not much reader engagement, I eventually stopped keeping up with it.

Little did I know that a piece I wrote for that blog about grooming senior dogs would lead me to the writing career I have today.

Retiring from Dog Grooming

In September 2016, after a preventable accident, I decided it was time to retire from dog grooming after 12 and a half years. I had been researching how to pitch articles for freelance work, and I had a feeling that getting out of dog grooming was the push I needed to finally pursue a writing career.

Two months later, I was driving for a ride share service full-time when I got an email from the editor at a large dog-related website. She had seen my article on grooming senior dogs and wondered whether I would be willing to write a test article for $40. Of course I would!

After many hours agonizing over those 500 words, the editor hired me to write two article per week to start off. As I learned more about writing for the internet and proved my reliability, she gradually increased how many articles she gave me each week.

This introduction is already too long, so I’ll skip more details and say that first opportunity has led to me being able to support myself entirely with freelance writing for most of the last year and a half. It’s been a bumpy road, but I am so fortunate to be making an income from home right now. I honestly don’t know what I would have done if I was still relying on dog grooming for my income when the pandemic hit.

What Do I Write?

While much of my freelance work is still dog-related, I’ve been branching out. My biggest clients include a telehealth website and a flower delivery company. My strong suit is writing articles on topics that I can research and understand, which includes most things apart from technology or cars.

As far as Medium, I write a lot about mental health. Some of my articles are more informational. Some are personal essays. Occasionally i get the itch to write poetry. All in all, I want to share my experience struggling with mental illness, so others know they aren’t alone in their struggles. I want to reduce the stigma associated with mental illness and show that we can be productive members of society.

I just got accepted into Illumination today, so I don’t have examples from this publication to list. I won’t list articles that are in competing pubs, so here are a few things I wrote before I started applying to pubs.