Everything's Easier with Company

Nicole writes like a girl 

For a stretch, I was feeling a bit lost and a lot overwhelmed. I frequently worked 13 hour days, finishing one shift only to drive across town to the next. While pulling yourself up by your bootstraps to earn a little extra scratch sounds practical in theory, it still wasn't really adding up. I had the energy to earn the money, but not quite the willpower to save it. Those extra dollars turned into the cups of coffee and takeout lunches and dinners I'd buy to support my habit, and though I refused to admit it, my energy expenditure to total gains ratio had hit its limit long ago.

I always knew that the juggling would have to end at some point - indeed, that it must - but it wasn't until the right day and the right conversation that the absolute necessity of it clicked into place.

I'd recently been promoted, and decided it was time to bring some more adult style into my life - and I knew that Nicole would know exactly what to do. We made lunch out of it, and before I knew it the conversation had turned from the books we were reading to the stories in our lives that have helped to make us who we are, and the more we talked, the more it felt like a weight lifted. As we talked, we conceived of another reason to meet, and a week later photographed this workwear series together.

Throughout, I could not stop thinking about the wealth there is to be had by investing in creativity. By letting my fiscal worries scatter to the wind, I had opened up an inner sanctum in which I could begin to build wealth in my sense of community. When you are able to lay all your cards down on the table, and force yourself to turn them face-up - it is then, and only then that the sorting can begin. Boy is that sorting ever some necessary, important work, too.

When you arrive at what you are, new things can begin - and I'm ever glad for the collaborative company in which it can happen.

Enjoy the Silence

When I started cultivating this space, I always knew it was going to be something susceptible to change - and that what it is could change not just once, but many times. What I did not anticipate was how difficult it would be for me to exist in a public space in such a way that I actively draw attention to what I do, think, and participate in. 

Especially because I  began this project during a time when I did not feel particularly strong. I am an advocate for change, and my life changes often, but the time following my graduation was the most anticlimactic time I've ever experienced. The self-motivated and ambitious spirit that I possess and have come to rely on buckled and folded when the higher-education escalator dropped me on the ground floor. Right where I had expected to feel empowered by my sense of accomplishment, I found myself knee-deep in a great, sweeping mass of inertia. What I saw myself as being, and what I actually was, circled around and around, until it was all just undertow. I felt ineffective at best. 

While I won't claim that it changed my life, I picked up Susan Cain's Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking and welcomed the period of self-reflection it encouraged. In these words I found my truest self. 

For example, highly sensitive people tend to be keen observers who look before they leap. . . They feel exceptionally strong emotions - sometimes acute bouts of joy, but also sorrow, melancholy and fear. Highly sensitive people also process information about their environments - both physical and emotional - unusually deeply. They tend to notice subtleties that others miss - another person's shift in mood, say, or a lightbulb burning a touch too brightly. 

The self-identification in these pages built a ledge I could hoist myself up on, and so I kept reading:

Your sweet spot is the place where you're optimally stimulated. You probably seek it out already without being aware that you're doing so. Imagine that you're lying contentedly in a hammock reading a  great novel. This is a sweet spot. But after half an hour you realize that you've read the same sentence five times; now you're under-stimulated. So you call a friend and go out for brunch - in other words, you ratchet up your stimulation level - and as you laugh and gossip over blueberry pancakes, you're back, thank goodness, inside your sweet spot. But this agreeable state lasts only until your friend - an extrovert who needs much more stimulation than you do - persuades you to accompany her to a block party, where you're now confronted by loud music and a sea of strangers. 

Imagine how much between you'll be at this sweet-spot game once you're aware of playing it. You can set up your work, your hobbies, and your social life so that you spend as much time inside your sweet spot as possible.

Oh! My sweet spot. Of course. Someone finally has a name for that stressful inner dialogue that occurs every time I have to make a decision about how to spend my precious spare time. It also explains why I always feel like I'm bracing myself every time I leave the quiet sanctuary of home behind to go be in the world. Finally, information presented in a systemic way that validates my need to make decisions in the moment based on how I feel, and what stores of quiet energy I have amassed at that time. 

I'm learning how to be present in the world in a way that is consistent with my needs, including when it comes to this space. I know, I know - have I blogged enough about that yet? But this string of posts signals to me a greater discomfort and concern about being here in a genuine way. Coming from a candid place with the smallest possible quantity of premeditation is my sweet spot. Words are about participation and connection, and every minute I spend writing is a moment I spend genuinely re-engaging with the world. 

So, with that -- I am here, and I am ready.