Usually phoenixd is run as a system service, so it's always in the background. By the way, you need to send around 20k sats to it to bootstrap the wallet before you can pay invoices with it.
Discussion
I was able to pay a 20 invoice, but yes I think that goes towards paying the fee credit debt.
By paying an invoice I mean withdrawing from the phoenixd wallet
While you're there, I want to test out restoring a seed. You know what command that is?