Nick Sandmann’s life has changed for the better in the year since that story broke, as has mine – thanks in part to RedState for giving me the opportunity – after I lost my administrative job of nearly 18 years in mid January 2019 due to layoffs.

I get questions from time to time about who I am, how I started out, my background, etc so I thought I’d get a little bit more in depth about all that with VIP subscribers.

I’ve always loved to write, but in my early teen years I was more into writing poetry and short stories and (unfinished) fictional books. Following the political goings on was not a priority for me for that period of my life.

In my late teens and early 20s, I was one of those liberals robbed of reality and blinded by left-wing media bias. It was just so easy to buy what the nightly news sold to you without bothering to look into any of it yourself, especially as a “mature” teenager (LOL) and young college student preoccupied with “more important matters” like what plans my friends and I were going to be making for the weekend.

Not only that, but the latter half of my time in college I worked a full time job and was paying my own way through school. It was tough, but I did it.

Oddly enough, it’s when I was in college that I had a change of heart and went from being a feminist liberal to a staunch pro-life conservative (for most people, it’s the other way around!).

Right after I graduated from college I got a job in radio – talk radio. My plan in life originally was to be a music DJ and write in my spare time (I had zero confidence in my writing at the time). But as it turned out, talk radio was the perfect fit for me as I finished my transition from liberal to conservative. I started out as a producer at the radio station, then I had my own afternoon show … and then got promoted to the morning slot.

Because the pay wasn’t great and I needed to better support myself, I got out of talk radio and worked office jobs for the next 25 or so years. But I never lost my love of writing.

But in the early 200s, my interests switched more to opining about what was going on in the world than trying my hand at writing fiction books (though even today I still dabble in that in my spare time). I started frequenting political message boards and became a pretty frequent poster. Sparring with Democrats and defeating them by using their own arguments against them was addictive to me. After all, I used to be a liberal, so I already knew most of their arguments before they tried to use them against me. 😉

Around this same time, I started my site with the domain name of SisterToldjah.com. For old-schoolers, you remember the story of Bill Clinton having his “Sister Souljah moment” – well, my nickname on some of the message boards I frequented was a spin off from that and it stuck.

My goal ultimately was to write about politics and current events for a living, to be my own boss. But I had to make a living and pay the bills, so I stayed in administrative work, and wrote on the side, making a small amount of ad income, receiving PayPal donations here and there, and doing some occasional freelancing that enabled me to build a little nest egg. But I gradually stopped writing at my site full time, because I was being pulled in a lot of directions both professionally and personally and something had to give.

Even with writing less at my site, though, I didn’t give up on the dream.

A few years ago, a close friend and I gave a new political site a go. It was called American Lens (the domain name doesn’t work anymore). The site revolved around a combination of local and national stories. It was something I did in my off time and unpaid, but it was worth the try we gave it. The competition was pretty tough, though, and we didn’t have the resources we needed to continue on, so the site had to fold about a year after it started.

It was then I really started to wonder if I’d ever realize my dream of writing for a living. But all those years of hard work finally ended up paying off after I lost my longtime job. I decided to take a leap of faith and take the risks associated with being your own boss. Knowing I had a small nest egg that I had built up doing part time freelancing over the years was a comfort. I knew I’d have it to support me (if needed) while I began navigate the uncharted waters of full time freelancing.

I also knew I had the experience and background to write about politics but would there be a few sites willing to take a chance on someone like me who had a respectable following but who had nevertheless been more focused on a social media presence than a blogging presence?

As it turns out, there were. RedState , Legal Insurrection, and North State Journal (where I write a Wednesday column each week) thankfully gave me the chance within days of me losing my full time job, and I’ve been putting the pedal to the metal ever since.

I still pinch myself sometimes thinking about how I’m realizing my dream at long last.

But if people didn’t read my work, I wouldn’t be able to continue doing this, so I owe readers a rather large “THANK YOU” for clicking on my pieces, commenting on them, giving me feedback on social media, etc. Your continued support means I get to continue to do what I love to do.

Thank you. Sincerely, thank you.