Q1 2024:It Did Not Hit The Same ( But it Did Hit)
I write quarterly letters to help clarify my own thinking and process what is happening and my response to it. This is Q1.
Coming up on thirty-four is a weird age precisely because it is short of half the decade, and far enough for enough of it to be done to reflect on in a new decade. You've crossed enough surface area to acknowledge what you don't know, enough to be clear on a few things you do know, and a present tense of discovering much more of my life and what it means and what it has meant.
I was professionally depressed for the back half of the 2023.
This is important to start with, because much of how I experienced the beginning of this year, was colored by how I ended last year. I am, in many ways prone to a kind of melancholy, which is not to say i do not love life, I do, it's that I tend to ruminate on its meaning more than the average person in my life. This is why the people in my life (I think) run such a wide gamut; they do things and experience things differently, and show me through their life, how love can function and be expressed. I am grateful for that, and in a weird way, saddened that I do not feel things in a similar way.
Depression is a funny thing. It's not so much a definition, as it is a condition, and a moment to moment reality. This is what made it so tricky for me to pin down personally, and address it emotionally. I'm grateful I have friends, family, faith, and resources at my disposal, but frankly, that did not stop the pressure or the pain. Truthfully I woke up in March, and realized huh, so that's what 90 or so days of depression feels like, while still functioning. Oh.
I say professionally depressed, to mark a distinction between the demands of my daily life, and the reality of my inner world. I did not have time to really be sad, disillussioned, loss of appetite, and a host of other thigns that
We never talk about our glow down stories but everyone’s got one. That phase where you start sleeping in, gaining weight, losing focus, stop caring. It’s not rock bottom but everyday it feels like you’re losing grasp and watching yourself fall apart from the corner of your room
— Sherry (@SchrodingrsBrat) March 21, 2024
My glow down has had distressing, particularly because I could not map it or truly understand how deeply intertwined it was to any kind of growth. So I thought it was simply just demotivated. I didn't want my goals, I didn't want to feel better, I just wanted to understand what it was going to mean if I got better. I got up everyday, but on almost all of them that was the hardest thing I did. It also coupled with embarrassment, because I am not the kind of person who deals with those kinds of things, you know? I have an incredible, life, I have people who love me, etc,etc. I did not allow myself to admit something, because I believed it made me something. And I can't be something like that, because you know, I am me. That's for other people, who need my help, support, advice, care. Funny, how the hills we die on are the ones we struggle to live from.
A (INCOMPLETE) LIST OF THINGS I LEARNED, AND AM STILL LEARNING.
The reward for any kind of growth is more (of everything).
The terrorism that is therapy-speak has robbed the public discourse of a reality that 'getting over' something, can also be an introduction to new things you did not know about our expect.
Strategy can be impeded by hesitancy.
I would have published more in Q1, had I just pressed publish. But I like the feeling of doing everything, except releasing. The release is where control ends and expectations are set free. Scary hours.
It is easier for me to support someone who needs it, than to look at what I need and ask for it.
This has developed into a self-authoring that is so centered on my own agency to engage what I need, that I do not realize I am not asking for what I need. I almost exclusively believe in going to get it, and with an internet connection and having the ability to use my faculties, and the accessibility of the internet. But with a deluge of information available, the ability to right size and engage the thing you need too, is not lost on me.
Motivation and routine are inversely correlated.
Shifting routines to beat out motivations and restructure my days around energy has been both a privilege and a high price.
Some lies are so deep, they can only be dislodged by an earthquake.
Those quake events (much like a quake read) shake up enough of you, where the underneath becomes the reality of what you did not expect.
Constraints do more for you than a perceived sense of freedom ever can.
What I do not do, and in turn, what that allows me to do, where margin can get created. Setting up time to do the things, and adjusting towards what happens when those things do not go accordingly.
You might not recognize how much your confidence has been shaken until the thing you did with ease is now the thing you do hesitantly.
My achievement addiction is in constant conflict with my desire to define 'enough'.
I've identified the variables, but taking the time to become more comfortable with what I want, is still a process. I am more swayed by the perception of what I should want, and what it will mean for relationships I value. I think I am still scared of what I want, and what that says about me. That could be me as a recovering people-pleaser, or just because there are so many things I could do, the rubric for choosing my what needs to be updated to match the current reality of who I am.
Collecting is not investing.
People, places, relationships, health, money, whatever. Accumulation assumes no risk, which is in itself, a risk. Investment is the choice to allocate a resource (time, money, effort) towards an end.
I've been pivoting my entire life, without a safety net. I still get upset with myself that I do not do it 'better'.
I am often an untrustworthy historian of my own experiences.
You can be addicted to pain. You can also be addicted to comfort.
This is a weird one for me, as that tension is something that I work through when I imagine ease, and I imagine what else I want from what i am doing.
Love: worth it, never controllable, always revealing.
Lessons of the heart are of a variety all their own. But I am still bullish on it.
I hold a specific kind of structural embarrassment about my career.
Jumping in and out of industries, formalized work, and consulting, has been nice, but it has left scars. I'm grateful for all I have been able to do, but I cannot shake this feeling that I have not done enough. It is a nemesis of mine, that precludes me from even enjoying the next accomplishment, or engaging the current one with integrity. So every time I explain where I have been, or what I have been doing, I feel a ping of regret.
The ability to curate your own focus, is still one of the greatest personal differentiators you can develop for yourself.
The times I remember focusing deeply, and being able to replicate that, were some of the times I was least likely to be moved by things I could not control.
My personal sense of loyalty can create sabotage globally throughout my life, if not managed appropriately.
This is a feature that I am still organizing thoughts around, but it feels like a bug other people benefit from, but I do not. It's something I pride myself in, but loyalty to something that is not in service of where you are going anymore, is a letting go of epic proportions.
Be mindful of conflating zero acceleration, with zero velocity.
It's a weird concept, but not speeding up, is not the same thing as not moving. I am still learning how to apply this, but it is important for this season of my life.
I do not have a clear sense of enjoyment as it relates to my life right now.
This might be the hardest admission, but I do not remember a time when I could think back and say ' wow, I enjoy my life' for a sustained period. I have moments, memories, and experiences, but they seem to leave more quickly than they arrive, so I struggle to retain the utility of having been there.
Even if you are your own competition, losing to yourself still hurts.
Nothing prepares you for missing your own mark, then realizing you are blocking your own way towards the things that you need to do and said you would do.
I associate my public visibility with impending dehumanization.
Not sure when this codified fully, but I am certain it has an impact on what I do and do not say, share, or communicate. Working on shaking free of that, but I came by that view honestly and painfully. I am upset I have not fully shaken it, bu I am proud of how I have been able to not let it stop me from doing, making, and speaking about the things that were there for me to do and become. I could do more, and I will, but I also do not want to my identity in any way tied to public perception. Still sorting through my own blockers there.
I have embedded some expectations deeper than my own desires.
Digging some of those out has been hard, but refreshing, in the sense that they do exist, they were just underneath a lot of other things, because they did not fully meet or submit to my own relationship with myself.
Routines and rituals create margin.
My worst days always got better when I did something that was part of a routine, even if it happened later than scheduled. Got to protect those.
When people say, 'work doesn't define you', I (mostly) think they are lying.
This is not to say that it should, but it has been fascinating to watch people comment on this moment in my career as I navigate things, and tell me that 'work' doesn't define me, while I watch them publicly, create definition from their work. This is not a condemnation as much as an observation; the work we do, has a profound impact on who we feel we are, even if it oes not tell us what we are. But to just say 'I am more than work' while telling me how to get ahead in it, is asinine to me.
In the building of new boundaries, I formed a reductionist view of relational interactions.
Not good, but somewhere I started to create a diligence process built off my own fears:
How much does this person want?
How much will it cost me?
How long until I can recharge from it?
Unlearning that skepticism may be the challenge for the rest of my 30s. I can operate at the extremes of something, so I need to find a healthier range.
I tend to flirt with my own potential, but not commit long enough to fail quickly into new things.
This probably started somewhere in between leaving Blavity and the last year, but I developed a penchant for idea generation, and a disdain for launching and committing to things. I've worn the cost of my failures deeply, and it has shaped what I thought was possible, and what I thought would make me palatable. It's why I enjoy strategy so much; it gives me the ability to wear a problem or a point of friction, without having to put myself into it deeply. The downside is that I have not had a sustained period of focusing on a vision I feel strongly enough about, often because I am enraptured with other ideas that are adjacent to me, but not my own. I am learning to let go of that.
Sometimes you win wounded.
...and that pain can only call you outside of your name if you allow it too.
Most career advice is so subjectively watered down, that by the time it gets to you, it only as usable as the situation you can apply it too.
Maybe I'll write on it soon, but the conflation of expertise, advice, and wisdom, is exhausting and overwhelming. Learning to parse through what to take, what to leave, and what to ignore. In that way, we all have to be curators now.
Shelf Reads
Getting Too Good at the Wrong Thing - Nat Eliason's Essays
The siren song of subs
PIVOT! - by Evan Shapiro - Media War & Peace
Navigating The Turning Point
The World Doesn’t Need More Journal Apps | WIRED
We’re not sharing intimate details of our lives on the internet anymore. We don’t have to—despite the flood of tech companies looking to fill the vacuum.
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