Hustling and Healing: A New Blog Post
I wrote a piece for a blog and it came out last week. Many of you have likely seen it because we are connected on one platform or another. But, I wanted to add it here, because it seemed like a better place to talk about why I wrote it.
First, a little aside about writing. The topics I write on have to be so moving I can’t not write about them. It’s the only way I can be so open and vulnerable and public about it. So, when the opportunity to submit for this blog came about I was really struggling to come up with a topic on cue because that is just not how I’ve traditionally operated. I came up with a few things, thought them through, added bullets, fancied it up a little and voila…hit send. The next day I was talking to a co-worker and ended the conversation with, “be careful, healing can also be a hustle.” I wrote back to the editor with zero hesitation, no thinking, no bullets and said - I have another topic and she responded it was my choice. I was further along with all of the other topics, and I was tempted to use one of them because I’d already done all of that work. I hadn’t a clue how I was going to make this healing hustle thing come to life and also make sense; it was a thought buried deep, yet to surface. I just knew I couldn’t not write about it.
Someone asked me once, “How do you know when you are done?” I said, “Either when I can’t stand to read one more word of it one more time or it makes me cry.” I’m also always utterly astonished at the finished product. It never looks or sounds or feels how I envisioned it and the way a mishmash of random thoughts, smatterings and half written paragraphs eventually make their way to something I somehow needed so badly myself is just beyond me - every single time. Like I didn’t pour over it, piece it together like word Tetris and wake up at night thinking about it. Almost like it didn’t actually come from me.
In any case, I wrote this because most of my healing journey had kind of left me feeling like a failure because I didn’t really follow through with anything. I couldn’t stick to a plan to see if it “worked.” I felt like I was an unreliable parent to my own self. But, then there would be some key moments when I would remain atypically calm or say what I was thinking without rehearsing it 100 times or set a boundary without hesitation. And there were even much bigger milestones, really scary, hard ones. And I realized, even through my disjointed ways…I was doing it. In the awareness and openness and willingness to stretch a little and listen to my very quiet, but very knowing, but sometimes very annoying voice…I was doing it. I was getting there.
I’m learning that I just like trying a bunch of shit, all of which is unlikely to last long term but possibly leaves fragments of goodness in their wake. I do this with all manner of things in my life. For example workout schedules, outside of training for a race, I’m all over the place. Also, if you recall the goodness experiment (if you missed it, check several posts back) that was supposed to go for 90 days and I barely eeked out 14. A few weeks ago I had the idea I was going to write postcards to someone every Monday. That lasted for three weeks. I bought a bunch of embroidery thread to make those old friendship bracelets we used to be obsessed with because I was going to get really good at and do it while I watch TV. I made one. One. I could go on. Believe me. And maybe I’ll come back to some of those things, but my sources say no. I like to piddle. I have ideas. I like my ideas. Apparently, I don’t like to finish my ideas. But, I’ll try all the things, and not finish a one of them because that is how I do it. Also, I’m still getting there.
In any case, click here for the post on ElleTwo.
More me, more you…that’s what I want all of the days :).