This is what really matters | #32
Learning about love and the edges of my boundaries
In this week’s writing circle, Minnow read a beautiful poem to us, I loved this bit:
Sometimes when we feel lost,
floating outside of what we know,
who we wanted to be
and where we wanted to be,
it's tempting to feel small
and wonder, Maybe.
These past five weeks have been a baptism of fire in how I want this next chapter to play out, rediscovering my identity, learning to love and realising when I’m at the edge of my boundaries. More often than not, I have felt lost and small. And yet, it’s these exact moments that have taught me what really matters.
My renaissance
I’d intentionally left my full-time job to make space for a creative sabbatical last August. Instead of capping it to an amount of time, I gave myself a pot of money and the time would run out when the money did. I wanted to know if art was my path. I’d been wondering if the way I felt, in flow and ethereal state, while painting was a sign that this was something I had to pursue. I’d been wondering if I spent real quality and serious time on my art, could I reach levels I’d never dreamt of? And if through that, could I create art for a living?
I spent five months drawing, painting, printmaking, writing and in some ways reflecting. More than art-making, I was given space to learn about myself unrestrained. I saw my mood fluctuate when my routines weren’t in place. I saw my motivation wane without an external carrot or stick. And then through that I saw renewed intrinsic motivation take its place when I finally broke through the question of ‘What is the meaning of it all?’ (A piece for another time perhaps).
The pot of money didn’t run out but I got the answers I needed.
What my sabbatical taught me
I realised that I did not want to make art for a living. To do so would require sacrifices I wasn’t willing to make such as the very high likelihood of living as a poor artist or being an art teacher and/or studio assistant. The grind didn’t inspire or interest me. I didn’t want the life I needed to live to have a shot at the outcome I wanted to have. And that made me realise I was just attracted to the allure.
And if art isn’t what I am going to spend my life doing, I went back to the drawing board asking myself, what then? Art is intellectually stimulating and creatively demanding. There is no ceiling and I think that is what drew me to it. In the same way, I realised I actually enjoyed the desk job-y things that had the intellectual and the creative. I loved building products specifically tech and even more specifically AI ones. I loved the intersection of translating between technical and commercial value. I loved working with people, combining brains to work through a hard problem. Ultimately I loved that feeling of building a tech product that was finding people to delight. And through that iteratively finding its fit in the market.
I found this bubbling up sensation of a deep hunger and a renewed yearning to build something. I wanted to sink my teeth into a project, and grind at it in a way that felt good. I felt that fire in me being stoked. I wanted to roll my sleeves up again. I wanted to join forces with a small group of other people chipping away at a problem together, trying to make something come to life.
How I want this next chapter to play out
This fire in my belly being revived made me realise that I prized the early-stage startup small team I got to be in Foster. I loved working intensely and closely with a group of earnest yet ambitious people who, like me, believed in truth even in the face of discomfort, and who, like me, were relentless with their curiosity to solve problems or create new markets. And if I could be greedy, I wanted to do this with people who had spent time working on healing themselves.
I don’t know if I will be like this forever, I imagine there will be circumstances that change this such as having children or getting older and having less energy. But because this is where I am now, I feel an eagerness in my somatic body, that this is the next thing I am looking for.
Rediscovering my identity
I know that work doesn’t have to be my entire identity. It took me a while to accept this. As someone who has trained as a yoga teacher, massage therapist, coach, counsellor and has an artistic as well as writing practice, it makes sense that my identity isn’t just the work that pays me. But work needs to feel meaningful and exciting for me. And needs to have the right amount of that to justify the ratio of my week it makes up.
I want to work on something where I don’t have to colour inside a box that has been predefined for me. I want to be the one who builds the tried-and-tested framework rather than operate within one set out for me. I want to create things that have never existed before. I want to be creating my role as it expands with the company. I don’t want to be told ‘this is how we do things’. I want to build things and put it out into the world, whether that is the art I make or the work I do. I want to be expressive in these ways.
I want my identity to be meaningful work but not just stop there. I want my painting and Burning Man installations to form part of my identity. I want my yoga practice and sauna life and writing to be parts of me as well.
My understanding of love
I’ve always struggled with romantic relationships because I’ve always struggled with intimate trust. One way I realise I protect myself is by requiring as much information about a person upfront as possible. This way, I can assess whether I will feel in danger by being vulnerable with them.
It is also so easy to draw boundaries when I start to feel uncomfortable. Instead, I’ve been challenging myself to sit with things that trigger me so I can see what beliefs, assumptions or traumas inform that feeling.
I’ve been thinking a lot about how love grows and reveals us. We often think of love as requiring compromise or is about making our partner happy. I am growing more and more to believe that relationships are about setting us free. Thanks to a podcast series called the Art of Accomplishment, I truly believe that choosing to be with a partner is about making our full selves come together to be more than a sum of their parts. There is no perfect partner, there is only the willingness within each of us to expand our hearts, meet them where they are at and to love them despite the things we wish would be different about them.
If we are in a position to see that partners don’t actively try to hurt us, rather their actions are informed by their own experiences, traumas and/or upbringing, then we can see their humanity.
As I play with the edges of my boundaries and forgive others in ways I might never have done before, I watch a small voice in my head, the one that believes it’s rational saying ‘But people aren’t allowed to hurt me like that’. And I watch the beliefs that sit behind that play out.
This is what really matters
Things don’t matter to the extent I think it does.
I think about these a lot but lately I’ve been easing the grip on them:
How much money I make and if it justifies how I think I should be valued professionally
Whether I am being smart about my investments
Whether I own property as a proxy of my safety (I don’t currently own property)
Whether a romantic partner is worthy of me (note: not really vice versa)
Whether a romantic partner will do something that in my view unjustifiably hurts me
When I will finally meet ‘the one’
More and more, I am embodying the adage that there is no ‘way’ and there is no single truth. I could be making millions or I could be making thousands and if my fear is that the market doesn’t value me enough, I will always feel a lack. It isn’t the absolute amount that matters, it is the mindset I come to the figure that matters. It also isn’t how much money I’ve saved or what property I own that will soothe my money anxieties. It is more a question of if I have a mindset of scarcity or abundance. With a romantic partner, there is obviously work I need to do on trust and fear of abandonment. I won’t meet ‘the one’ until I do more of that work because ultimately there is no ‘one’. There is just time, place and the self that is in that time and place.
What I am saying is that wherever I go, there I am. So what type of ‘I’ do I want to be there or here? That is what truly matters.