comfort isn’t the goal

I’ve been trying to figure out what to write for this week. A part of me wants to keep it fun and light; another part wants to educate and use life coaching skills to be helpful; and another part of me just wants this to be a personal reflective spot for me to share what’s currently going on in my life (any joy and struggles that are going on) so that we can all feel like we belong, like we have a safe space to share with others here, where we’re just not alone, you know? Because while we have more and more people being added to this planet every single day, it also feels like we’re getting farther and farther away from each other every day too. Less authentic, more performative connections.

There’s also been instances where I’ve wanted to like “stock pile” posts, days where I feel like I could write multiple posts to just have them ready to unload. But that’s not always helpful, to you or me, and it might remove a layer of authenticity too? To me, that sounds like productivity for outcome sake, not doing it for the love of sharing and connecting. I’m trying to actively choose to not live like that anymore. I want to share my heart more than I want to share my brain because my heart is what carries the soul messages I actually want to share, the ones that really could be helpful. I really want to talk about how I have been navigating my relationship to comfort this week because I feel like I’m seeing more and more layers to ‘comfort’ than I’d ever seen before.

Comfort has really been a crutch for me, for a lot… nay, ALL of my life, because it felt like it was the only thing that kept me safe, but safety isn’t really living, is it? For example, I’m in the middle of trying to find a new place to live. Currently, I live in a studio apartment. I hadn't lived in an apartment since I was 25, and the reason that I stopped living in an apartment is because I kept getting “intruded upon” by neighbors over the years. These intrusions being like: a homophobic neighbor seeing me and my partner being romantic out in public, having that offend them so much that they start trying to get us evicted for all kinds of wild reasons; to a saxophone player deciding that 9pm was a good time for practicing; to a guy who lacked the understanding that his front door slamming at 2:30am is also rocking my whole apartment awake. With that said, I’m also very aware that I was also intruding on their space from time to time. I was wild, loud and reckless sometimes because I was 25, an alcoholic codependent, in college, living in a complex with my addict partner and making great decisions to be friends with all the other addicts in the complex… nice! I was partying a lot, playing music too loud, too late, and trying to defend those actions responsibly, which failed. So, I got to thinking (believing) that “sharing walls with people was dangerous and unpredictable.” There was too much uncertainty for me because I also couldn’t grasp what my responsibility was at that point in my life. Your mid-twenties can have you feeling like you’re stuck in constant, never-ending spiral of “do I behave like a kid or an adult now?!” Forming what your values are, while also getting so drunk that you forgot what they even were the next day, while trying to understand what a “value” even means, let alone comprehending how to act them out… what a fucking whirlwind. No wonder doom-scrolling became a thing.

Now, back to our mid-thirties, from this studio apartment experience, I learned I can respect people’s space [a lot easier when you’re not an addict anymore, who knew?] and I can advocate for myself in kind, calm ways. Granted, they can sometimes have a hard time respecting mine because I’m highly sensitive person, especially with noises, but that’s my struggle to juggle. Regardless, I lived here happily, I wasn’t harassed, great success! Now, I’m at a place where I respect myself enough to know that I don’t want share walls with other people and I have the means to do so, but it’s like another big pendulum swing for me. I’ve noticed this patten before. I’m trying not to pendulum the swing from extreme black and white anymore to somehow learn to be comfortable in the gray area because that is where the growth and the lessons happen for me.

So, here’s my pendulum swinging: I found this house that checks truly all of my boxes for my personal life and business, since my business is run for my home. It’d give me the space to put my elbows out a little bit more than this studio, but the cul-de-sac is really crowded. I mean, houses that are probably 50-75 feet away in all directions, except the front, which has a beautiful tree, but then… a parking lot. So, I see a lot manufactured things and not a lot of nature. That’s after coming from a place where I can see the Rocky Mountains from my apartment window, plus having a huge backyard in South Carolina that turned out to nature.

The view from my apartment window.. like are you joking me?

The backyard of my house in South Carolina

That single fact (okay maybe also not allowing pets) is wanting me to throw up the red flag and scream “HELL NO” as loud as I can! There isn’t enough space between me and other people. I don’t want to be perceived while being at home. I couldn’t not be perceived in an apartment because of sharing walls and I’m definitely too aware of that. I don’t want to feel that restraint anymore. While at the same time, I just left South Carolina, from a house that was H U G E, a good distance away from neighbors, private… and it was fine, but when I felt deeper, it was also lonely sometimes. I kinda have enjoyed getting to see and hear other people living around me, and my fear of being perceived is a pattern of my codependency that is based in fear and outdated belief systems trying to resurface again. I have had so many experiences in my life of people being really beautiful humans, so loving, kind, and not wanting to cause harm. I also know that if they do, I have the skill set to push back and set a boundary.

So it’s a aspect of comfort, right? Do I lose a house that I’m only probably going to stay in for a year or two out of fear of not being comfortable enough? What percentage of comfort is “high enough”? What would this look like out of the lens of curiosity instead of a problem?

Photo from my first solo vacation trip out of state. Lots of lessons about curiosity learned.

I’m continuing to dig for the data to remind myself that comfort isn't necessarily something to strive for, here or really anywhere. While yes, there's a enormous part of me that would love to live on 10 acres by myself, 15 minutes from a grocery store, no neighbors in sight, where I can scream, cry, sing, laugh and blast my music without feeling like I'm intruding on anyone… I also think I’ve healed enough to know that I’d miss seeing and hearing people living their lives, the opportunities for meaningful connections made by the mundane disruptions you don’t expect. But that’s the beauty of being a human. We can choose to sit in the feeling, in the thoughts, in the experiences and let them shame us into someone brand new. Then, turning around and sharing it with someone new… and earth keeps spinning, yeah?

While comfort is so enticing, so inviting, sometimes, so easy to find if you’re desperately searching for it, it’s also like you never riding uncomfortably in new skates while breaking them in. If you stop skating every time your feet hurt in new skates, you’d never break them in, and then you’d never get the chance to see how good you might be able to skate once they are broken in. You choosing to put yourself through discomfort is what’s going to mold you into exactly who you’re supposed to be, even if you don’t know who that person is just yet.

So I'll ask you what I keep asking myself: what comforts are actually serving you, and which are keeping you dizzyingly stuck spinning in one place?

Stay soft,

Quentin