Today is my twenty-ninth anniversary as a self-employed person. (File this under “things that make no sense.”)

On May 30, 1997, I walked out of my old firm for the last time. Three days later—Monday, June 2, 1997—I awoke as a self-employed person, doing research and writing for other lawyers. I had one client and a box of business cards. No alimony, no trust fund, no independent income. In the corner of my living room sat the desk my parents bought for my bedroom in 1968. A computer sat on that desk, a hand-me-down from my father’s office that was still connected to the dial-up modem I’d used four years earlier, when I was in law school.

Step by step, I figured it out. I spent a morning on the phone with different banks to figure out where to open a business account. I bought malpractice insurance. I obtained an email address that wasn’t on AOL. I spent a lot of time at the law school library that first summer, because it was my only way of doing research until I found a Westlaw plan I could afford. I bought a laser printer to replace the dot matrix (another hand-me-down from Dad’s office) that I’d used in law school. The printer sat on the wooden card table I bought for $15 to use as the dining table in my first apartment; while the printer has long since been replaced, that table still does its job. For current files, I bought an oak bookcase. I went to Transfer Enterprises, which sold used office furniture, and bought two three-drawer lateral file cabinets which they delivered for a fee nearly equivalent to the price of the cabinets; I know I put one in the back hall of my apartment, but I don’t recall where the other one resided. (They didn’t match—one was sand-colored and one more of a pale yellow, but I didn’t care because they wouldn’t be next to each other.) In October, 1997, I bought a Gateway computer—remember those big boxes patterned with cow markings? At some point, I got a fax machine and a separate line for the fax and internet so people could call me even while I was on Westlaw or getting a fax.

Bit by bit, I made progress.

If you’d asked me back then where I would be in 29 years, I’d probably have laughed. Retired, I might have said. Married. A mother. A grandmother. Relaxing.

Reality: none of the above.

Because here’s what happened instead. Two years after I started my business, I bought a house, all on my own. I’ve dated various men over the years, but as it turned out, I didn’t want to marry any of them. I have six cats and no human children, which means nobody wants to borrow the car or asks for money or brings home inappropriate companions.

Instead, I had the freedom to explore my life, my desires, my dreams. I traveled to Thailand as a missionary. I volunteered at soup kitchens and cat shelters. I wrote fan fiction and realized how much I missed writing for pleasure. In 2013, I decided to start writing seriously, and I began having stories published and placing in (or winning) literary contests. In 2020, I published my first novel. My third novel will come out later this year. Not what I expected, but it’s good just the same.

Because after 29 years, I’m still on my own. Writing, publishing, doing research and writing for other lawyers. Sitting on my porch, drinking wine and writing a blog post as the temperatures drop and the electric kettle in the kitchen starts to simmer. My own choices, for better or worse.

Mind you, the bumps have been plentiful. Sometimes I’m drowning in work, and other times my project list is nearly empty. Funds have ebbed and flowed, ebbed and flowed. I’ve spent many nights reading and rereading the gospel of Matthew, clinging to the lines about the lilies of the field and how your heavenly father feeds them and are you not of more value than they? But my home equity line has been a lifesaver at times, and I’ve been able to meet my obligations. This fall (God willing), I’ll pay off my mortgage. I’ve already paid off my boiler (purchased 2016), and in July, I’ll pay off my appendectomy (2023). My debt load is presently minimal, and if all goes well, I’ll wipe out the remnants by the end of the summer. (Debt makes me nervous. I’d rather go without and pay it off than carry a balance, but that’s just me.)

Many people would say that I was incredibly foolish back in 1997. Get a job, they would have said. Find a steady paycheck. Most people who make this kind of leap have a spouse with a good job and health insurance. (I love Medicare, which costs a fraction of what my self-funded health insurance did.) Back when it all started, my parents blessedly kept most of their concerns to themselves, but I know they were worried.

And I never told them about how, just a couple weeks after I went out on my own, when work was slow, my downstairs neighbor who worked in the school cafeteria came upstairs and offered me hot dogs and half-pints of chocolate milk because they’d been told to take everything that was left in the walk-in so it wouldn’t get thrown out, and this was what she’d taken and she couldn’t use it all so she wanted to share.

Because that’s the kind of weird grace that has followed me through the last 29 years. I have a clipping of a cartoon that I’ve carried all this time. I think I cut it out of the paper during that first summer, back when I didn’t necessarily know from day to day how things would go. I still carry it in my pocket calendar, even after all these years:

The truth is that if I had to do it now, at my age, I doubt I’d take the leap. Thirty-seven isn’t that young, but as it turns out, it’s young enough to still jump, to launch yourself out into the world without having anybody there to catch you, and yet to trust that somehow, it’ll all work out. And crazily enough, it has. So far, anyway.

I wasn’t raised to be an entrepreneur. Nothing about my current lifestyle is what I learned from my parents: my father spent his entire career with one company. And yet here I am—a self-employed lawyer, an author, and an independent publishing company. None of it makes sense, not a single shred. But it happened. I don’t know how, but it did.

Kinda makes you believe in miracles, doesn’t it?