Real talk
I haven't smoked a cigarette in years.
The past few weeks, I've picked up the dirty habit again. Nothing quite close to how it was back then, but a couple of sticks a day can be a slippery slope. To be honest, it's just the stress of making a wrong decision. I'm not going to bore myself with the details of a dismal reality I've been living in for just a mere month, but for the sake of a Future Version of Nina perusing this, I'm just reminding you that you took the wrong job.
It's not a total disaster. You're paid too well, like, six-figures well, you're still being creative, you're shuttling back and forth to Singapore, you're an integral building block of ramping up the business (or so your boss tells you). But the late hours are draining you--the 2am calls servicing clients like, say, from Los Angeles who are selling ethical bamboo sheets and pillowcases. Not fun. What is there to do when stress is bearing down your neck and there's no one else awake while you have to take those calls? Smoke.
I honestly hate relying on it as a crutch again. But it just got me thinking that I'm at least at that level of adult where I know it's a habit that doesn't serve me, and is only a reactionary mechanism to get through the day. To be completely fair to myself, I've buckled up and handed in my resignation last Thursday. And I know I can easily quit cold turkey again. I've been without it for 4,5 years and I didn't really miss it. It's just suddenly got to me how I could literally change myself, change my environment, if I so will it. At one point you just get so sucked up in your own life that you forget that you could actually turn things upside down at any point, you just have to do it. The key is to decide on doing the right things. And I guess that's not always clear.
I feel so much more confident in who I am now, temporary career slip-up or not. But I guess there is still fear in finding out about the extent of my agency (and of course the privilege sandwiched in between there, I'm not going to skate around it.) One of the things I frequently toy with is just moving to another country, see if a new place could just tell me what the fuck I should do with my life. But then my experience kicks in again, and I know that if I can't make it happen where I am, it won't happen anywhere else. I am who I am in any place.
I struggle with feelings of dissonance, when I consider my skill set together with what I imagine to be intangible threads of purpose. I cannot seem to find an overlap. What I crave is community, service, but above all, expression. After all these years of being in a creative profession, it seems absolutely pathetic that I've come out feeling more like a person with nothing to say. I feel like there is a core truth to me that I've been neglecting, a sort of emotional emancipation that I subconsciously don't allow myself to experience.
Is it fear? Apathy? Comfort? A three-headed monster, most likely.
I'm absolutely fine not following anybody's concept of an acceptable timeline, in terms of doing all the "right stuff". I feel no obligation to be like my peers, to get married, to have kids. At least not right now. But I also haven't made enough effort to explore what the options could be. I'm in full coast mode, simply because I can literally afford to. I know that's truly terrible, but that's what's real. And I think I just have to place myself into a position where the safety nets are, if not totally gone, then at least unreliable enough so that I could choose to take risks that will probably hurt me in some way.
I'll probably read this later on and wonder why I just didn't do something about it. But right now, I just don't know what to do. I have options, yes. But what the fuck do I do? Do you get what I mean? I just don't know.
The past few weeks, I've picked up the dirty habit again. Nothing quite close to how it was back then, but a couple of sticks a day can be a slippery slope. To be honest, it's just the stress of making a wrong decision. I'm not going to bore myself with the details of a dismal reality I've been living in for just a mere month, but for the sake of a Future Version of Nina perusing this, I'm just reminding you that you took the wrong job.
It's not a total disaster. You're paid too well, like, six-figures well, you're still being creative, you're shuttling back and forth to Singapore, you're an integral building block of ramping up the business (or so your boss tells you). But the late hours are draining you--the 2am calls servicing clients like, say, from Los Angeles who are selling ethical bamboo sheets and pillowcases. Not fun. What is there to do when stress is bearing down your neck and there's no one else awake while you have to take those calls? Smoke.
I honestly hate relying on it as a crutch again. But it just got me thinking that I'm at least at that level of adult where I know it's a habit that doesn't serve me, and is only a reactionary mechanism to get through the day. To be completely fair to myself, I've buckled up and handed in my resignation last Thursday. And I know I can easily quit cold turkey again. I've been without it for 4,5 years and I didn't really miss it. It's just suddenly got to me how I could literally change myself, change my environment, if I so will it. At one point you just get so sucked up in your own life that you forget that you could actually turn things upside down at any point, you just have to do it. The key is to decide on doing the right things. And I guess that's not always clear.
I feel so much more confident in who I am now, temporary career slip-up or not. But I guess there is still fear in finding out about the extent of my agency (and of course the privilege sandwiched in between there, I'm not going to skate around it.) One of the things I frequently toy with is just moving to another country, see if a new place could just tell me what the fuck I should do with my life. But then my experience kicks in again, and I know that if I can't make it happen where I am, it won't happen anywhere else. I am who I am in any place.
I struggle with feelings of dissonance, when I consider my skill set together with what I imagine to be intangible threads of purpose. I cannot seem to find an overlap. What I crave is community, service, but above all, expression. After all these years of being in a creative profession, it seems absolutely pathetic that I've come out feeling more like a person with nothing to say. I feel like there is a core truth to me that I've been neglecting, a sort of emotional emancipation that I subconsciously don't allow myself to experience.
Is it fear? Apathy? Comfort? A three-headed monster, most likely.
I'm absolutely fine not following anybody's concept of an acceptable timeline, in terms of doing all the "right stuff". I feel no obligation to be like my peers, to get married, to have kids. At least not right now. But I also haven't made enough effort to explore what the options could be. I'm in full coast mode, simply because I can literally afford to. I know that's truly terrible, but that's what's real. And I think I just have to place myself into a position where the safety nets are, if not totally gone, then at least unreliable enough so that I could choose to take risks that will probably hurt me in some way.
I'll probably read this later on and wonder why I just didn't do something about it. But right now, I just don't know what to do. I have options, yes. But what the fuck do I do? Do you get what I mean? I just don't know.