I took a gap year from college and lived out of my car. I then launched a side hustle that has turned into a lucrative career.

• I moved into my car during a gap year from college.
• While living in my car, a lucky break led to ghostwriting for a global CEO.
• Ghostwriting gave me a front-row seat to the business world — and led me to build my own business.

In a previous life, I was a ratty, vagabond mountain girl. I never thought of myself as a writer, and I definitely didn't plan to build a career as a ghostwriter. I rarely planned where I'd sleep each night.

During a gap year from college in winter 2020, I was working full-time at a ski resort in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. As a side hustle, I wrote off-the-cuff LinkedIn content for coaches and solopreneurs. Even though I enjoyed the occasional peppermint vodka shooters that skiers would give me as a tip, I knew working at a ski resort wasn't my long-term career plan. Come summer, I was making just enough money writing content to get by.

So I moved out of my subsidized employee housing and into my 2005 Subaru Forester, turning my content writing side hustle into my main hustle.

I spent my gap year living out of my car

I took a gap year to ride out the pandemic and live out my fantasy of being a mountain-town girl.

I'd wake up in the Bridger-Teton National Forest nine long miles from town, set up shop at a supermarket Starbucks (easier to bum the free wifi), bathe with biodegradable soap in a glacial runoff river, and consume an unbalanced diet of canned kidney beans, plastic-packaged sushi, and warm White Claws.

I loved living a nomadic life without any ties. I was happy I took the chance on a gap year. At 22, I found freedom in living (sorta) off the land.

Then, in July, I woke up to an email from an unfamiliar UK-based agency: "Hi, Kit, we have a project that includes content writing." A bit vague, but I replied. When I found out who the client was, I wanted the job so badly that I found the idea of signing my first NDA glamorous.

My assignment: Write four LinkedIn posts for the CEO of a large, global bank. The pay was $1,000 a month — about half of what I made at the ski resort. They didn't know I was a dyslexic 22-year-old without a college degree who was living out of her car, but they also never asked. I had to Google what "ghostwriter" meant.

I then started cosplaying CEOs

The business world has always fascinated me. I wrote my first business plan in fourth grade, read popular business books in middle and high school, and enrolled in the business school at my university. I dreamed of one day becoming a CEO of a large organization, but I had no real sense of how to get there — or even what I wanted from the job when I got there.

I assumed it would take decades of climbing a corporate ladder or years of 60+ hour workweeks building something from scratch.

Ghostwriting collapsed the timeline. I got to step into their minds, understand how they saw their industries, and learn from their years of hard-earned experience.

In doing so, I developed an executive voice, sharing perspectives I hadn't yet lived myself. Ghostwriting ended up being a shortcut into the world I'd always wanted to be a part of.

I built my career from a lucky break

When I returned to college full-time, I was set to finish my business degree, but I knew my classes wouldn't be enough to support my career.

I took outside writing courses and continued to ghostwrite for clients in between classes and tailgates.

Five years after that lucky break, I graduated from college, sold my Subaru, and moved to New York City — somewhere mountain-town Kit never imagined living. Here, I've met other ghostwriters, journalists, and strategists, which opened the door to new opportunities and eventually led me to start my own agency, Seneca, which helps executives, founders, and investors build their personal brands across social media, newsletters, articles, and other channels.

My gap year was supposed to be a fun break from reality during the pandemic. Instead, I found a career that challenges and fulfills me, a city I thought I'd never live in, and, in a full-circle way, the opportunity to build and lead something of my own. All that's missing is free peppermint and vodka shooters.