space to exhale
I'm almost a week into my new apartment and I'm so happy with the space I've gained. This place is double the size of my old studio and while I'm still living above people (which still tests my patience, lol) I think that's actually exactly where I'm supposed to be right now. Every house option falling through wasn't punishment, it was redirection. Living in a house was going to pull me further into isolation, and honestly? I knew that. But I was willing to fall into that pattern anyway because it felt easy, like putting on clothes right out of the dryer on a winter morning. Safe. Warm. Slowly shrinking my heart and soul without me even noticing.
Future working area!
This place feels like I got a second working lung after going about life with only one. It wasn't painful, but this new place has space to hold my deep exhale. The windows let in light I didn't have before. The office window faces west so I can see the mountains and remember why I dropped everything to move across the country. It's like when someone finally wraps that second arm around you and really embraces you in a deep hug for the first time after only getting one-armed side hugs all your life. There's integrity here.
What this space gives me that I didn't realize I was missing: I can walk away from a creation and come back to it in the same state. I don't have to finish a project just to clear space for dinner. I took that for granted when I had it before, but I won't again, and I’m glad to learn something new about my needs/wants.
It's also teaching me something about how I live and love at the same time, something I thought came naturally to me, not realizing I'd been actually keeping them in separate rooms my whole life. I didn’t notice the slight internal shift it took to move from one to the other. But yesterday, I felt that warm wash of tingly, buzzing love run down my back while I was recording a video about building out the office space here, it was a feeling I’d felt before, but a very long time ago. Back when I was a few years into YouTube and felt that pure passion for what I was creating. It was a feeling that I forgot could happen. That I could be consumed with love internally while externally producing something that not only fills my cup, but has the potential to fill others cup too.
The west facing window! <3
This space is already sparking something in me that I had to suppress in my previous space. I want to make shirts, draw designs, film videos, try new dying techniques, get into lino cutting! I'm back in the stew of creativity and it feels so good. But I'm also being intentional about not letting the excitement tip into overwhelm, because, shit, my office isn't even built out yet! I'm waiting on furniture, storage, floor protection for dye spills. The space isn't ready, and that's okay. I'm practicing patience with the process and taking time to prep myself for not only the awesome work I’m going to take on, but the internal swings that will come as life continues to happen.
Because, if you didn’t know, codependency isn’t just about obsessions with people, but with obsessively doing as well. The constant creating, the overproducing, the never stopping… sometimes that's not flow, that’s avoidance. Even though I want my brain to be rewired from a decade of work at a corporation, that’s just not realistic. I still condemn myself constantly for not being able to work more than 5 hours some days without critical fatigue, then the next day, flip to working 8-9 hours with no lunch, to end up losing the next day entirely to burnout. The pendulum is fucking real, my guy.
Shelf O’ Dyes
Underneath all of it is this: I know the life I want to live, but I still wake up some mornings butting heads with what society says success is supposed to look like. Even though it’s one of the scariest things to do, we’ve gotta learn how to define those things for ourselves, and wake up each day choosing those definitions (even if they feel ‘too wrong’ or ‘too new’ to stick with), you must still choose them. Because if not, you’ll stay trapped by rules that don't even apply to you.
Some nights that pendulum swings hard. Like the 10pm-planning-my-next-work-day swings, when I get blindsided by the waves of self-doubt and self-hatred that start face planting me into the sand. I stand up, swim back out just to get pounded again. But I'm learning when to call it, stand up after a beating, look back out to sea and say, “I’m fucking done for today, man, but I’ll see you again soon” and not seeing that as failure, but as the needed break to make sure that these are the waves that I want to be catching.
It's terrifying, exhilarating, and exhausting all at once. That's the paradox of being human. And if we’re all honest here, then we know that without the paradox, this life wouldn't be nearly as interesting.
