This is such a good question, it's something I touch on in tomorrow's article.
The truth is, all choices come at a cost.
If you keep serving the existing crowd, you can feel safe in stability but risk losing inner momentum If you evolve toward what feels true, you risk losing your current audience but work becomes more enjoyable and sustainable—and you eventually attract a different crowd If you try to be both, you end up with muddy positioning and lose out on the compound benefits of owning a lane.
So it’s up to you to decide what meaningful work means to you.
Exactly the issue. I LOVE what I’m doing and writing and living. It is helping me become more and more clear and congruent and like a one room house - no separation of identity when the activity changes. My question to myself is how to make that process attractive when it is hard as hell and involves reconstruction at a deep level. Ha. I don’t think I can and so I will keep going for the people who find me accidentally. For now anyway.
"My question to myself is how to make that process attractive when it is hard as hell and involves reconstruction at a deep level." I'd love to know more about what you mean by this.
Hmm. Well, I guess I feel like the process of being forced to separate myself from the many outer structures that were “holding me together” (job, friends, self-image as highly competent, a “plan”), left me with my inner reality, which was desperately neglected, starting to cave in, and at war with itself. I was totally unaware because my coping strategies were working (as I thought) brilliantly. I was not a person actively escaping into drugs or hedonism or any of the usual suspects suggesting self-harm. In fact, I was living a life exactly as I had been taught to - in service to others. Now, here I am, actually full time caregiving in a pretty outwardly insecure position, and I finally have the space and grace to attend to my own needs, because if I don’t, I will go down. The curb appeal is gone, but that leaves the structural integrity of the house, which needed work. A lot of work. Work that I would never have had the ability to even see without being yanked away from what was “working.”
I think our society is at war with itself. It is engaging in self-harm on a massive level. We don’t know what to do with the parts of us that are tender, needy, “unproductive,” unexpected, out of the norms we have set, etc., and so, just like is happening in the States on a macro level, we begin to use increasing amounts of force to keep those elements (of ourselves!) locked up, quiet, repressed, or maybe even tortured to death. We don’t like to see truth in our own souls. I don’t. I didn’t. But it is necessary. It is so very life-saving. And I think that starting with our own tendency to self-harm, our own locked closets full of real “people,” would go a long way to saving our society as a whole.
But that level of work, as I say, is not very fun to contemplate. I don’t “enjoy” it. I do enjoy how I’m feeling finding out that parts of me I thought I needed to hate are the ones with the soft, tender, creative, dreamy, brilliant wisdom and unexpected strength I need to survive in this crazy, crazy world.
Make sense? I’m really struggling with putting all this into words. But it’s a good process and healing me as I go.
I found it really relatable. Growing an audience means clarifying your identity.
But what if the crowd that gathers connects with a version of you that doesn’t quite fit?
How do you stay true to what you love while keeping them engaged?
This is such a good question, it's something I touch on in tomorrow's article.
The truth is, all choices come at a cost.
If you keep serving the existing crowd, you can feel safe in stability but risk losing inner momentum If you evolve toward what feels true, you risk losing your current audience but work becomes more enjoyable and sustainable—and you eventually attract a different crowd If you try to be both, you end up with muddy positioning and lose out on the compound benefits of owning a lane.
So it’s up to you to decide what meaningful work means to you.
Exactly the issue. I LOVE what I’m doing and writing and living. It is helping me become more and more clear and congruent and like a one room house - no separation of identity when the activity changes. My question to myself is how to make that process attractive when it is hard as hell and involves reconstruction at a deep level. Ha. I don’t think I can and so I will keep going for the people who find me accidentally. For now anyway.
"My question to myself is how to make that process attractive when it is hard as hell and involves reconstruction at a deep level." I'd love to know more about what you mean by this.
Hmm. Well, I guess I feel like the process of being forced to separate myself from the many outer structures that were “holding me together” (job, friends, self-image as highly competent, a “plan”), left me with my inner reality, which was desperately neglected, starting to cave in, and at war with itself. I was totally unaware because my coping strategies were working (as I thought) brilliantly. I was not a person actively escaping into drugs or hedonism or any of the usual suspects suggesting self-harm. In fact, I was living a life exactly as I had been taught to - in service to others. Now, here I am, actually full time caregiving in a pretty outwardly insecure position, and I finally have the space and grace to attend to my own needs, because if I don’t, I will go down. The curb appeal is gone, but that leaves the structural integrity of the house, which needed work. A lot of work. Work that I would never have had the ability to even see without being yanked away from what was “working.”
I think our society is at war with itself. It is engaging in self-harm on a massive level. We don’t know what to do with the parts of us that are tender, needy, “unproductive,” unexpected, out of the norms we have set, etc., and so, just like is happening in the States on a macro level, we begin to use increasing amounts of force to keep those elements (of ourselves!) locked up, quiet, repressed, or maybe even tortured to death. We don’t like to see truth in our own souls. I don’t. I didn’t. But it is necessary. It is so very life-saving. And I think that starting with our own tendency to self-harm, our own locked closets full of real “people,” would go a long way to saving our society as a whole.
But that level of work, as I say, is not very fun to contemplate. I don’t “enjoy” it. I do enjoy how I’m feeling finding out that parts of me I thought I needed to hate are the ones with the soft, tender, creative, dreamy, brilliant wisdom and unexpected strength I need to survive in this crazy, crazy world.
Make sense? I’m really struggling with putting all this into words. But it’s a good process and healing me as I go.