putting the pieces together

Happy New Year! Hopefully you’re almost 100% sober and able to read straight. If not, keep reading anyway.

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about authenticity when it comes to my own creations. I want to create things that speak to people, but I never want to deviate from who I actually am or be perceived as someone who has all the answers. In fact, I feel like I just gave myself permission to not have a solution for every problem, or an answer to every question. That’s a really hard space to occupy as a control freak.

Since I’m being still and whatnot, I have nothing but time to think about my writing and the anxiety it often induces. Aside from the generalized anxiety I seem to live with, I experience the same symptoms whenever I feel moved to speak about a topic. It’s like I pray and ask the Universe for clarification on what I should be putting out into the world only to refrain from actually doing the work.

Instead I hoard notebooks full of ideas and lists then I order pizza to cope with the hunger induced by stagnancy.

For example, what you’re reading took about 3 years to actually come to fruition…

I am the queen of racking my brain for answers to rhetorical questions. I wonder what makes me the authority of a certain lived experience just because I lived through it. For whatever reason, having survived isn’t often enough for me. I guess I just never really considered myself to be an authority on anything despite the fact that people have constantly come to me for solid advice about their issues. It’s both comforting and frightening - like girl, I don’t have all the answers...please take this advice with a grain of salt and If you die, don’t try to haunt my dreams. But I digress.

I have one real desire: to be of service to others, especially women.

Throwing myself into the hustle and bustle of corporate life to avoid any real connection with others or to appease my ego’s obsession with busyness isn’t who I authentically am. It certainly was a version of me that got me to this point now: embracing the process of mourning that life and giving myself a chance to develop a new and different one.

So here’s to being tired of telling the same story and convincing myself that I can’t cure my own creative stagnation.

Here’s to acknowledging that the answers are already in you despite how much you’d prefer to duck your own insight and look elsewhere.

& shoutout to ordering pizza as a coping mechanism #carbs. We’ll get to the other side of adulting and flowing into our purpose together.