Hope this doesn’t derail the conversation too much, but really good words from @Jouissance for me to follow and share my thoughts after a long hiatus. I experienced the latter part exactly as he wrote it.
Mini report:
Ascension was the first sub I ran, as recommended by @Trader and many others. They told me to run it for 6 months. I ran it for one cycle and switched to Khan. Yikes.
I ran it again for 2 cycles paired with EoG 1 & 2 respectively ~Sept/Oct last year.
During this time, I realized that despite everyone’s best intentions my “side business” (that wasn’t really MY business) wasn’t working out. It came to a point where I found myself arguing yet again about some new money that I was expecting, and I just had a thought – what the fuck am I doing all of this work for such a pittance? Like seriously what is going on, exactly. We’re scrapping and debating over what amounts to +$15 / month. And at the same time I realized that a huge shortcoming of mine was always kind of leaving things up to someone else or to some sort of fate. I’d have different iterations of plans and paths to take based on certain situations, but I was rarely the driver of those situations – even if I was taking action… if that makes any sense.
I spent about two years building up this thing and I had a lot of investment in it but it just clicked for me and I found the steel to say “enough is enough, I’m done.” I was pretty upset and for the first time in a long time I made it abundantly clear, no holding back. Gave up all my share of the money, clearly announced that I was done doing so much work for what amounts to scraps, withdrew all of my attention and energy from things that weren’t the bare minimum for my job (and my bare minimum is still way higher than the standard here), and withdrew my attention from my boss. I felt a bit petty about that last part, but something in me told me to just back myself fully and be a dick about the situation because that’s what was needed. I decided to own myself and my situation.
I think after a month she realized I was pretty damn serious, so she apologized in a big way, and paid me ~$1000 to try to make up for it, too. Honestly, that’s no money compared to what I brought in during that time and what I built and created that she gets to keep, but at that point I could feel she was sincerely trying to apologize. So I accepted it and we got back on good terms. I also haven’t done a drop of extra work since that moment and – surprise – my work life has become way less stressful and I feel more respected by her, even. Part of that might be because she now has to do some of what I was doing before and she can understand my perspective a little bit better. 
Basically this:
Ascension woke me up to a huge weakness and bad situation in my life, helped me see what it means to back myself, and showed me the importance of making firm choices.
It sucked in the moment, but this challenge ultimately cleared the way for me to move on to a much much much better situation.
