I'm up to my eyeballs.

An identity crisis. That's an interesting concept.

I'm beginning to think that it's the people who believe they know exactly who they are that are really in a crisis. Like those people who believe they know everything about God (what an idea!) from how the earth came to be to how these things called "the fall" and "reconciliation" work. Those people make me nervous. I don't mean to otherize. What I mean to say is that I believe there's something healthy about thinking about one's belief system as a lens through which to see the world, rather than real answers to questions that we just can't know. It's like building a skyscraper with a bit of give, so that when an earthquake strikes, it doesn't crumble like my gingerbread houses always do.

But this is mostly besides the point. I'd just like to apply this same principal to knowing oneself. It seems to me that as long as my life is not static, I'll never stop getting to know myself. And even if I experience something and then experience it again five years later, I'll be a different person who responds differently. To be honest, it's exhausting, but I suppose it's better that finding myself and my life boring.

This all comes to mind as I've been working on this self-employment project over the past several months. It's forced me to develop skills that I never wanted to develop before because it would have required leaving my comfort zone. Risking rejection, risking failure, speaking with confidence to skeptical people, sales, relying on others, asking for things - these are all things that I avoided before, but now, I've been slowly wading into a pool of them. At this point, I'm up to my eyeballs, but I'm learning to swim, so that's good.


This post was written, very tardily, as a part of a blogging game. The players are The Creative Collective and the topic is Identity Crisis. See what the others are saying.

It matters.

I've been learning something pretty amazing lately:

Being kind to a person can change their life.

I've found myself in the midst of a community of extraordinary people, all with different backgrounds, different goals, different priorities, different most things, really. It's neat.

I've also found myself, rather surprisingly, with a lot to offer: a rather over-sized couch, a dining room table, an ear, and a mouth that is capable of saying "It's okay to be you. We can try to be better together."

I didn't realized that these things were so valuable, but as it turns out, they are. And I've been increasingly grateful to have them. And as more people enter in, they find what they have to offer and they give it and I am grateful. I think you can see where this is going. It seems like real, organic community happens when everyone becomes aware of, grateful for, and excited to give of what they have to give.

No one is perfect. I trust you. It's not about being right. What do you need?

We should say these things to one another more.

I was talking with someone about this - this community that I'm invested in - and I realized that this is, in part, what I'm trying to do right now with Mercury Studio, but on an occupational level. I want to give people a place where they can do their work in a community that is supportive and positive. 

It matters.

I guess when something is important to you, it moves you in every part of life.

This post was written, very tardily, as a part of a blogging game. The players are The Creative Collective and the topic is What Moves Me. See what the others are saying.

How will it end?

I've not been a good synchroblogger lately. You may have noticed.

I just sat and reflected on why that might be. I'm in kind of a strange place in life, yes. My work is no longer confined be the hours of 9:00 and 5:00, yes. But, I don't think a changed schedule is it.

I'm learning a lot - about myself and about the community I live in. One would think that this would be great fodder for blog posts. I think that it will be. In the thick of it, I'm having a hard time drawing conclusions. I don't know what to think about the fact that I've been unemployed for over five months and have found myself in three different bands, a house church, owning a second house, designing, building, and launching a business, and constantly trying to fit other things into my life that will help me avoid getting another job where I feel unchallenged and unappreciated.

This is a lot. I'm growing and processing some things. My brain is just barely keeping up. And there's also that added guilt applied by the looks I get from people when I, the unemployed twenty-something, talk about being busy or not having time.

It's all mounting. It's been mounting for months. Slowly at first, but I feel it now. The pressure, the doubt, the expectation, the anticipation. I'm not sure how it will end - whether it will be in one moment where everything stops and life is suddenly calm, or whether it will gradually deflate like a balloon. Either way, I hope an implosion of the brain will not be involved.

This might all sound dramatic, and at times I feel the need for one of those splash-water-on-my-face-and-then-tell-my-reflection-in-a-bathroom-mirror-to-pull-it-together moments, but over all, I really can't complain. I don't want to, either. My life is so full that it's busting at the seams.

My biggest problem is myself. And though that should be glorious, it's kind of a tough one. It was easier when I had someone to blame for my life not being what I wanted, but when the only one responsible for my failure is me, the stakes become higher.

No matter what happens, the ride has been worth it. So, if at any point in the future I try to complain, send me back to this post.


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This post was written as part of a blogging game. The players are The Creative Collective and the topic is A Record Scratch Moment. Click here to see what the others are saying.

Lest I Wither

I think I've written about this before, but it's still a thing, and I'd like to think that I'm ever-growing, so maybe my perspective has grown too.

I still feel some pressure to be taking advantage of my youth and singleness in a different way. That I've committed to a location for the past couple of years, and that I have no intention of moving in the near future, is confusing for some. What I've decided, however, is that, in much the same way that people with spouses and children are somewhat less free to change their lives on a whim, I too can build a life that's worth committing to. To say that I can't or shouldn't start building a real, permanent life while I'm single, is to say that I was created incomplete, and I don't believe that.

Putting down roots is an important investment, because when the scorching heat of the sun is taking water from my leaves, I'll need those roots to stay whole and healthy, to survive.

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This post was written, tardily, as a part of a blogging game. The players are The Creative Collective, and the topic is "know your roots." Click here to read what the others are saying.

I'm hungry.

I'm a rather intuitive person, which is convenient, but also gets me into trouble.

I'm excellent at filling in blanks - using whatever little information I have to complete the picture in my head. This has caused me to have a lot of faith in my intuition, which is fine, except when I'm wrong. My intuition and I are such good friends that I will sometimes follow it off of a cliff like a lemming. Or, when I have just few enough details that I can't be sure about something, I have a hard time accepting that I just don't know. I like to know and understand, to be able to connect ideas and information in ways that make sense. I was, after all, a humanities major.

Another, connected part of this funny personality of mine is that I desire very deeply to know myself - what's good for me, what's not, what I need and what I don't. Combine this with my intuition, and it appears that I have been blessed with a very strong and reliable internal compass, except, of course, when I'm wrong.

I say "wrong", but the older I get, the more complicated life becomes. I can no longer walk away from situations, confident that I made the "right" decision. There is still some right and wrong, I think, but the gray bar in the middle of the spectrum continues to widen.

It it no longer "I'm hungry, so eating is the right thing to do."

But, rather, it is "I'm hungry, but I need to be very mindful of the social and economic effects that the food I choose has had in my global and local communities, as well as the nutritional effects it will have in my body. I also need to be mindful of the people around me, being sure not to alienate or offend anyone with my food choice, while still managing to adhere to my principals."

Oh, my.

Enter: conflicted insides. I talked a little bit about this in a post last week about expectations, but now I'm thinking more about how annoying it is that I can't always just do what feels right, without worrying about the consequences. If I am served chicken at a friend's house, it feels right to eat the chicken and thank them, but that doesn't mean I wont think about the horrors of the meat industry.

I like it, though - the complexity. It's like when you're in college and you finish with the general education requirements and finally start to study the things you love. Your mind is blown as you discover things are less neat than you thought, but you appreciate the field that much more.

So, here's to complicated adulthood. May it never get boring.

This post was written, on time, as part of a blogging game. The players are The Creative Collective. Read here what the others have to say about "Hunger."

Goodness, gracious.

I was walking by myself downtown last night at about 10pm, and a man stopped me. His appearance suggested that he was having a hard time of it, maybe even didn't have a home - tired face, worn clothes.

"Excuse me, could you help me out?" he asked, politely.

"I'm sorry, I don't have any cash." I smiled and replied, starting to walk backwards toward my destination.  Since I stopped waiting tables, I never have any cash. This has become a kind of reflex for me - I don't want to let people spend too much time asking me for money I don't have.

"I'm not asking for money, I just need help getting some food."

I stopped walking. It's bad enough that there are people in my city in real need of food, but if a person is standing in front of me asking for it, there's really no excuse.

I looked around. We were right by a convenience store. I thought maybe we could go in there and I would buy him something with my credit card.

"What kind of food?" I asked. This was important to the plan of action I was putting together in my head.

"I need food for my baby. I have a ten-month old and they kick you out of the shelter after 60 days. I'm not ever from here, I'm from Connecticut."

At this point, two things were going on in my head: First, why was he not answering my question? It made me think that his speech about the baby was just that, a speech. Second, I remembered that I actually did have cash, but I was too embarrassed to give it to him, lest he think I was lying when I said I had none.

"Listen, I'm coming to a woman for help, so you know I must be in a really bad place," he went on, grinning and bowing slightly, as if I could certainly understand that.

My eyes squinted and my mouth got smaller.

"I'm sorry. Not tonight." I smiled weakly and walked away.

I'm a little ashamed that I let my ideas about gender equality stop my from further engaging a human that was obviously in need of something (maybe not food, but something). I really bothered me, though. I thought "Really? Even here? Even when I'm being panhandled, I need to be told by another person, who doesn't know me at all, that my being a woman dictates what role I can play and what I have to offer?"

Goodness, gracious.

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This post was written as part of a blogging game. The players are The Creative Collective. Click here to read what the others have to say about "MEN."

Going Rogue

I've half-made a few resolutions in my head. You know, the kind you don't really want to make because you suspect there will a time when you really want to break them, and if you never made them, then you're not really breaking them, right?

One resolution that I did make is to write all of The Creative Collective (see the bottom of this post for more info) posts that I missed over the past year. The problem is that part of the reason I missed the posts is that I didn't have anything to say about the topic. Creativity: challenged.

My first make-up topic is "Where no one else has gone before." I think the reason I avoided this topic is because it alludes to something I have a bit of an issue with: being unique. I've somehow grown into quite the little realist. Not sure how that happened. Maybe I was always this way. In any case, I'm discovering that it's a help and a hindrance.

I like being realistic because it gives me a certain confidence. If I have a project in front of me, I'm pretty good at discerning what needs to happen in order for it to be completed well. I can be a visionary, but I'm inhibited by what I can actually see coming to pass in my brain - nuts and bolts and all.

I don't like being realistic because it makes risk difficult when something important is at stake. I can see, all too well, every reason a thing wont work.

For instance, over the past several months, and more-so since being laid off, I've been pursuing some entrepreneurial projects. The idea was, if no one was going to hire me to do something important, I'd just have to hire myself.

The problem is, there is a lot of risk involved in these types of things. It's less the financial risk that I'm concerned about, and more the risk of being made a fool. If I put any real faith in these projects and they fail, then I will have been unwise and wrong, and I don't like to be unwise and wrong.

I understand that failure at this sort of thing isn't really failure, it's invaluable learning experience, blah blah blah, but that doesn't really make me feel any better. I like to be right and I like to succeed.

So, I move forward, because it's what I want to do, but pretty regularly I have this unpleasant discussion in my head that's similar to two parents discussing whether or not to let their 5'1" asthmatic son try out for the NBA.

"He'll just be crushed."

"I know, but we have to let him try."

Depressing, right?

Yes. But every time I feel as discouraged as can be, something tiny happens: a kind word or a small success, and I'm back in the game. I hear this is what being a rogue professional is like, so I guess that's a good sign.

Old photo of me looking triumphant:

This post was written, though very tardily, as part of a blogging game. The players are The Creative Collective, and here are their thoughts on "Where no one else has gone before."