following through

Who doesn’t love a rebrand?

I know I always have but I didn’t understand why. An external rebrand is not always the product of an internal one, but at its best it is. In order for a rebrand to truly take effect the intention behind it, the consciousness, really does matter.

I often start writing on here without knowing what I’m going to write about. I get to the point where the urge to write is pulsing through me so strongly that I finally sit down and just do it. These past few weeks have been calling me to look at and lean into things I have historically labeled as personal weaknesses, things I carry shame around. To out shame by speaking freely about it I know from therapy and previous self-exploration to be extremely empowering but equally anxiety inducing.

Does speaking freely have to mean posting these things on the internet? No it does not but here I am.

I’ve been writing a lot these past few months, more than ever before, but it hasn’t been writing I’ve shared. I journal every morning and every night, not because its a box to check in my morning or evening routine but because I really don’t feel like myself until I do. It is the most useful and important tool in my current toolbox of metabolizing the day, of strengthening the skill of self regulation.

I’m moving energy by writing, by talking things through in my voice memos, and yet not sharing it anywhere still feels like stagnation.

I’ve cleanly cleared the first hurdle of putting feelings of frictions into words, but the next hurdle of sharing it for other people to perceive looms infinitely larger.

A self critique I’ve grappled with for as long as I can remember is the ‘inability to follow through’. I have a propensity towards getting excited by different ideas and ‘failing’ to close the loop on any one of them.

Niche-ing down feels entirely unsettling to me, am I restless? lazy? a slacker? distracted? undetermined to a fault? My mind would proclaim an enthusiastic yes to all. I’ve been overcompensating and overcorrecting, internally screaming - LOOK I’LL FILL MY PLATE WITH ALL THESE THINGS, that way no one can tell me I’m slacking or incapable. But the things aren’t things I enjoy, and these things I don’t enjoy are taking up the space of things I could be enjoying if I gave them room to arise naturally.

And the irony of trying so hard to appear capable and in control and committed and consistent to everyone else in my life is that the only person I actually need to convince is myself and the rest will fall away.

I’d also be willing to bet that if you asked anyone close to me in my life, ‘slacker’ would be nowhere on the list of words they might use to describe me. Even writing that my mind protests, this word has a very real charge, there is a very real fear of being ‘found out’ as someone who can’t follow through, who can’t put the work in.

That’s the funny thing about personal lies- the story that feels very real to you, the story you fear to be true from the inside out is from the outside in, the furthest thing you probably appear as. The power of speaking these, even if just into the void, is that they loosen their grip.

When it comes to following through it’s not that I don’t care to, it’s that my excitement ebbs and flows. Writing is something I love so much and I don’t always feel inspired to do so.

Our society would say push through it, kick start your motivation, just do it… and there is a time and a place for that messaging too but I am learning that there is also a cost to opposing my energy.

What I think is speeding me up is slowing me down. This is loaded and layered, in this context it looks like learning to TRUST that when I’m not excited or inspired to create that doesn’t mean I’m lazy or lacking.

It might mean I need to clear some space of things crowding out that excitement or inspiration from coming through.

It might just mean that creating doesn’t look like consistency and curation for me. When I realized this I found it entirely comical as its been so ingrained in recent years that the way to succeed in the algorithm is an aesthetically curated and consistent output.

Yet I’m feeling like something new is in the works. Not just for myself but on a cultural level. How we use and relate to social media, how we work (separate ted talk on 9-5 culture foreshadowing)… there is air of an ushering in a new frontier. A REBRAND of how we relate to one another, to technology, to ‘work life balance’.

I love the idea that the career I could find myself in five years from now might not even exist yet.

Slowly but surely I have been growing into giving myself the permission to pave my own path.

Some days that feels entirely too terrifying and my brain gets in the way by obsessing over trying to figure out whats next. Other days I’ve been giving myself the space and grace to just figure it out as I go and to enjoy the ride.

The adventure of the unknown, the cosmic joke that the mind will never get to a place of ‘enough certainty’.

There is a difference between the pursuit of knowledge from a place of genuine curiousity and the pursuit of knowing in a scramble for false security we’re only seeking because we’ve lost touch within. Each time we disengage from the pursuit of knowing more in the spirit of the latter, we are freed up to experience our lives and our selves more fully, to remember the truth of security that will only ever exist inside of ourselves.

The Greeks have a separate word for the type of knowledge that is interior, intuitive ‘self knowledge’ — gnosis. I love this because it differentiates our pursuit of knowledge from internal and external means.

I’ve been on the journey of an inner rebrand that’s gone deeper than I could have imagined even at the start of this year, and still I know I’m just beginning.

I intend to keep writing and moving all this energy through me, I intend to keep rebranding not from needing outer approval or to keep up appearances but from the internal spark that moves me even if it comes and goes.

What if I don’t need to be consistent to create, what if creating is what cultivates my unique flavor of consistency? I won’t know until I try and try all the way through, from inception to sharing, creating to connecting.

Instead of judging myself for my creativity being impulsive and inconsistent (and it very well might be), maybe I just let it flow and follow it where it goes when it goes there. Only from taking a step forward will I attain a new vantage point from which to view it.

Here’s to following through on your terms. Without needing anyone else to tell you what that looks like.