Story time: transparency

Social media is for the highlight reel right? You’re supposed to brag on yourself, show off the shiny things in your possession, high moments only.

Well, not for me.

Sometimes I like to share missteps, failures, tales of falling just short because those things are helpful. At least I find them to be anyway. The above picture is my whiteboard that sits on my desk that I’m supposed to use to:

a) help me keep track of what day it actually is (meaning of the week AND date since WFH life has me in a perpetual state of every day is Saturday)

b) help me keep up with deadlines (both self imposed and those handed down from others)

You’ll see that I have the “release date” for my forthcoming project on there twice. Because when I feel grounded in the story that comes to me, I set a release date. It’s weird and I wouldn’t recommend it for everyone but it typically keeps me focused enough to see a thing through til the end. But what I didn’t count on was malaise. It slowly crept into my life just days after the euphoria of beating my January deadline and completely upended my February plans. FAAFO was supposed to be a Valentine’s weekend release, as you can see, but how about the bulk of it wasn’t written until well after the 14th had passed. 😂

And chile I was over here sick about it. Never mind about the fact that I’d LITERALLY just released a project—instead I chose to obsess about not meeting some arbitrary deadline that nobody but me and Jesus knew about. And honestly? If I had met that deadline? I don’t think I would be as in love with the final project as I am now. While I hate that I had to plummet into the depths of sadness that I’d experienced, this was a true blue lesson in slowing the fuck down & breathing.

Remembering my purpose and recalibrating. Exorcising emotions that didn’t serve me well.

Because sometimes we get so caught up in what we aren’t doing (well or at all) that we don’t celebrate what has been done. And as someone who constantly encourages my friends to take a moment to remember just how fucking dope they are, I wasn’t doing that for myself.

Quelle tragique.

But we off that. I remember now. And by sharing this, I hope that you too will take that moment to remember your dopeness. And that where you are is where you are supposed to be in the divine plan of it all. What’s for you to have is just within your grasp. No need to rush it because it WILL come. You just gotta exercise a little patience and wait for it. Keep doing the work in the meantime though. Because the reward follows the doing; not the whining/complaining/what iffing/why not meing.

That’s my $.02 anyway.