Working as a stripper and escort is anything but easy. You are often treated like a living blow-up doll and a therapist simultaneously. It’s a life that many judge easily…until you know more. Sita Kaylin, a California native who’s been in the sex industry since 1992, has lived the pitfalls of being naked in front of strangers and the absurdities that arise when you fake intimacy for a living.

Sita left home when she was sixteen, worked hard at several jobs and eventually started college after dropping out of high school. There, a roommate turned her on to stripping, revealing a way out of the crushing financial pressures she felt and her struggles as a pre-law student with very little time or energy to study. She had no idea how wild her journey would become and what a large part of her life it would be. Sita’s stories take shape through an often altered, occasionally sarcastic, sometimes illegal, and frequently funny magnifying glass she holds up to not just the sex industry, but also to human needs and desires, modern relationships, mental health, personal independence.

Anything But a Wasted Life is the autobiography of an unorthodox journey about a woman who has rarely said “no” to life. The majority of this book was written in strip clubs and dive bars around Los Angeles.