Living Otherwise

I've moved on from ghosts into memory scapes and alternative futures.

I'm spending some time in New York, frolicking and remembering how good I felt here, before all the huge transformations called me away. I'm revisiting all the reasons I packed up, sold everything, and left for Mexico.

Some of the core premise of why I left is still true: the spacious life, without a toxic, demanding job, is harder to cultivate here, especially given the reality for folks like me who were laid off or pushed out of corporate jobs, only to be invited back in at a fraction of the earning. What I'm also encountering is the possibility of living freely here. What I love most about how I experience New York is that I am so energized in all parts of my life. My community, my curiosity, my creativity are all well resourced here. I say this without a signed lease and in the midst of the summer of the Knicks' triumph, World Cup fervor, and Mamdani utopia. There's a sense that so much is possible and paradigms are shifting for the better. Outside of the magic of New York City, the core of it is being in proximity to more of my friends, being in more immediate exchange, has changed my outlook and capacity greatly. The ghosts don’t feel so heavy any more. And so I sit here wondering whether I’m getting an answer to the question I’ve been trying to answer since my break up and endings earlier this year: what am I meant to be doing and where am I meant to be? 

As we move through seasons of transformation, we sometimes encounter a crossroads: do we rework the dream, doing the same shrinking and silencing that we do in the work and lives that are getting harder and harder to sustain? Or do we open our hearts and allow possibility to meet us in the place of our desires? We either allow our desires to guide us, or we change them to fit what was. For me, there's no way of "going back." So the choice has been mostly easy, because I spent time in the exact life I wanted for over 10 months. I just have to figure out how to tolerate the in-between. Being grounded in the reality that what I want can exist makes it so much more possible to tolerate the discomfort and uncertainty of the present. I found more space, more creativity, more desire to live otherwise, with alternate structures and values that were by my own design. 

I'm still in this sacred nomad life, following my desire to live purposefully, spaciously, abundantly, and with community. And while it feels uncertain at times, I'm still learning to articulate that it is happening. Twice now I've had a New York summer, spent time embedded in community, and lived in places that don't require a grind. The dream is to make this a regular think. New York summers, balanced with time in Brazil and Mexico, funded by the work and vision of Rooted Reclamation.

The solopreneur's life is unpredictable, and even though I don't have the income that I envisioned through this practice (yet), I do have the resources and community to cover me. This is the exact terrain I coach clients through, not the absence of struggle, but the practice of staying resourced inside it. There is never a silver bullet. And I know this isn't just my story. If you're also standing at a crossroads, quietly renegotiating old definitions of success with yourself, here's some of what's helping me:

The Artist's Way

In June I started an Artist's Way cohort with some Mexico City friends and friends of friends. We are spread out across a few time zones and life stages, but we share Black sapphic queerness and a desire to reclaim our creativity. I started the 12-week Artist's Way back in Mexico City and struggled to follow through on my own. I was missing the kind of witnessing you can only get in community. I shared with a friend who expressed interest in possibly revisiting the journey together in another season. We came back to it and brought together a community of 15 or so folks, meeting weekly, sharing experiences in one of the few group chats I can tolerate these days. It has been so wonderful, to deepen connections, make new ones, celebrate others' journeys, offer mirroring, and see myself a little better. We're currently in Week 5, the week of possibility and allowing God to meet you at your desires.

To be in New York at this time is what the journey might call a synchronicity. It affirms my ability to create the life I want without compromising the dream. I also can't help but see the SOLO Method that guides my coaching work in this part of the Artist’s Way journey: stillness to hear from yourself, opening to release and experiment with new ways of being, loving kindness from yourself and your community, and ownership to take the reins over what you desire. I’ve been very good about moving through the first phase of stillness and solitude, and part of where I’ve felt stuck is not having true community close by. Close enough to hug, to catch inspiration, to dance, to learn from, to encourage. This is what I get so easily in New York, along with the guidance and offering of the Artist’s Way, it has truly put me in a place of wonder, momentum, and creation. Community is key. It has turned my ghosts into sweet memories and I am reclaiming the sort of playfulness and creativity that I had before I let the titles, and corporate ladders and aspirations take over. It makes me curious for others, as the world continues to fall apart and reorganize itself, how and with whom are you navigating change and transformation in your life?

Translating Terms

When things slow down, it's easier for me to think. When they slow down as much as they have now, contracts ending, getting ghosted after interviews, you start to think more deeply about the what, the how, and the why. I'm sensitive to not repeating patterns that created stress and strain for me in the past. When I feel the urge to go after a title or a salary, I sit with it a little longer to figure out why. I question everything that comes up, as if checking it for viruses of the past. Despite the uncertainty, I do not want to fall for the scarcity mindset that led me to shrink and silence myself before. I cannot afford to be unintentional about the values represented in my life.

In order to stay on the path toward the ideal future, I've spent a lot of time redefining and translating terms I used to use casually, turning them inside out, examining the roots. It's a practice I often use with coaching clients, to help them cultivate integrated lives that don't leave them with the work of separating "work life" from "personal life." As an example: the word "work" has become like nails on a chalkboard (I do not dream of labor). As I sit with the life I imagine— the life I want doesn't require me to give more to paid work than to any other form of work—the term "service" fits more closely. I want to be in a meaningful exchange. I want work that doesn’t drain. I want to offer my expertise to building life, capacity, joy, and ease for others. In using that language that aligns with the life I want, I find much more meaningful opportunities, I actually get call backs, and have exchanges versus the ghosting I get when I’m looking for work. 

Another example: Have to → Get to. I am not a person who responds well to unchecked authority. I've lived enough seasons where "because I said so" was the reasoning. I can be defiant when someone tells me what I should be doing without explaining why. It got me in enough trouble as a kid and as a young professional that I stopped examining. I internalized "I just have to show up to this unnecessary meeting," "I have to come home for the holidays," “I have to stay to prove I care,” only thinking about what I wanted as a complaint after I'd already accepted the obligation. In this season, I've learned that "should" or "need to" was a place where someone else's desire was in the driver's seat. A place where I wasn't intentional about what I wanted first, and often a good place to begin challenging my people-pleasing tendencies. Using the language of "get to" offers a little more space to consider why I’m doing something, and whether it's connected to my ultimate desire and dreams, or someone else's. 

Finally on perfection. I waste a lot of time trying to get things right. I've noticed how much I give away to organizing, perfecting a pitch, a client resource, a presentation. My internal dialogue is: if I get this right, there's no way I can be rejected. I have to meet this perfect standard to ensure the client is getting their money's worth. Similar to my desire to root out people-pleasing, challenging perfectionism has happened through a re-articulation of my values and desires. What I actually want is not to be perfect. I just learned that high standards were the way I'd been told I could succeed. While the adage of "twice as good to get half as much" is only right if I am committed to living in a world where that’s has to be. Living otherwise means remembering that my ideal life doesn't have that kind of bargain. I want to experience a world where growth and learning are at the center, where mistakes are opportunities to expand instead of the end of the road, where missteps are met with grace and coaching, and where my personal standard is a feeling and an outcome, not a performance. I want things to be beautiful, impactful, human, excellent, not perfect.

So I’m noticing more where I’m blindly following someone's jargon or expectation or ideal that isn’t actually mine. When I use this softer, more inviting, more aligned language, I find I am more energized to move through. I have more flow. Where are you using terms or ideas that aren’t actually connected to what you want for yourself? Who does it serve for you to use or live by it?

Creating a Curriculum

In trying to get a better handle on my ghosts, I've also redefined what it means to sit with the past. A few weeks ago I got the chance to screen BLK NWS at VCU’s ICA. It's a multi-genre film with the core question: Do you remember the future? The film plays with time, history, and fiction in a way that felt resonant and inspiring, and has put the thought of academic, archival study back in my spirit. “Living otherwise” comes from a reference in the film. It’s a clip of Saidiya Hartman speaking with Fred Moten about the Black Outdoors where she’s offering an explanation of the aspects of Black culture that are seen as failures, and could more accurately be described as living outside the structures that weren’t designed for us in the first place. It's got me thinking about my desire for reclamation in the gaps of my own histories. Rather than judging against others' standards, being stuck inside the imaginings and limitations of others, I get to dream outside and create my own ways of being. 

So I decided I’m not going to do the Black-lady thing of fitting my free time, curiosity, and uncertainty into another degree program. I decided to create my own curriculum, to give structure to the time I'm spending here, to give direction, momentum, and focus outside what falls back into just getting a job, just getting another degree, just following someone else's path. Making my own guide for play, study, creation, and connection has been such a beautiful way to catalog this season of my life. What this has looked like practically is not staking everything on finding a job but looking for fulfillment too. While I’m still looking for coaching clients, I’m exploring grants to help me build a digital family archive. I’m writing fiction for the first time since middle school. I’m looking into voice acting opportunities, flirting with podcasting, and other ways of leaning into the ‘your voice is so soothing’ comment I get from my friends. I’m volunteering and looking into opportunities to join nonprofit boards. I’m expanding what it looks like to move through this season and building new relationships to how I spend my time. It’s the same skill I use to create custom sabbatical plans and build out project plans for clients. With so many of us on the hunt for stability and navigating the in-between, what else can we study and create rigor around that doesn’t maintain the same structures of struggle and stress?

This season has still been incredibly uncomfortable and I wish I could fast-forward to the part where I feel more settled. Where I have a home that is my own, where I have more clarity about what I’m doing and where I’m going. There’s an economic background and reality that is recession that of course layers into the calculations. But like many a millennial, I have seen a few things in my day and I can’t imagine my ruin and demise more than my desires. Rather than trying to figure it out all out, I’m living first and allowing myself to be met. Living otherwise means centering the people, places, and projects that give me light rather than waiting for some external validation. I’m affirming this to myself daily and allowing God to meet me in my place of need.

If you've read this far, you already know I'm not going to pretend I have it all figured out. I'm building this life in real time, and part of building it honestly means letting you in while I’m in process. You also know I want to be in exchange as a coach, a partner, and a peer.

As paradigms and power shifts around us, how do you plan to live otherwise?

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