“Being able to work from home all day, being able to take breaks when I need to, I can now pace my work to my body instead of having to pace my body to my work.”

My name is Stephanie Servey, and I'm in Monterey, California. And in mid-2025, I turned my side hustle with an Etsy shop into a successful full-time business running a local yarn shop. My previous job was with the Naval Postgraduate School on an in-house contract design team. I was doing what I love, but after a while, I started noticing I was having nerve problems in my hands. I got carpal tunnel syndrome and cubital tunnel syndrome in both arms. I tried my best to stick it out and keep working because it was meaningful work. But eventually I just had to admit, this isn't working anymore. Leaving my traditional corporate. job was absolutely scary. And I sat down with my parents and what we ended up deciding was this side hustle that I'd had since before I left college, which was just making little jewelry pieces or doing freelance design here and there for people. We would see if I could turn my Etsy shop into a full-time business. So I…