For the love of God, STOP TRYING!
“Go for the gold!” “Move! Move! Move!” “Never stop trying!” “You’ve got this! Keep going!” “Keep your eyes on the prize!” “Never. Give. Up!”
Oh for God’s sake, STOP TRYING! Take a break! Give up! Forget about your goals! Let it go! Let it BE!
Honestly, when did we all become Marines? I know for sure I didn’t sign up! But it looks like I DID sign up somewhere back in the forgotten days of childhood or high school madness when it was critical to be like everyone else.
“Never give up!!!!”
Oh fuck you.
Very much.
I have persevered and kept my eyes on some prize or other, and never in my life has it brought me to a place where I felt the way I always wanted to feel: self-assured, emotionally supported, centered, grounded, satisfied. Never has it brought me to a place where I could then magically manifest what I wanted (what everyone I have ever known wants):
Money, freedom, delight, time, self-determination…
And then this summer came along. This summer in the middle of our “wake the fuck up” Covid19 pandemic. This summer when the U.S. government said, “Hey, we’re going to take away your minimal unemployment benefits in September 2021, so good luck!” and I didn’t “keep. going”. Instead I “freaked.out”…
…until I remembered: there is one place that I can always always always get a job; one place where no one cares about your age, your weight, your color, your sexuality, your beliefs — nothing! Nada!
A phone center. Sales.
(Aaaaand…cue the gagging. I hear you out there.)
I didn’t want to go back to work. I did NOT want to go back to a regular J.O.B. Nononononononononononono!
But I sat in my comfy, green living room chair one night, freaking out, crying, terrified of the fact that I wasn’t getting my business going in the way I had hoped within the time period I had hoped, and I was scared. Scaaaared.
And then I realized, “Hey, wait. I know one place I can always work on a moment’s notice.”
On July 23rd I started back to work. I chose to do so to support myself, which may sound ridiculously obvious to you but which has never been an easy and obvious thing to me because my motivations are always along the creative, interpersonal, self-expression line and sticking me into a traditional 8-hour job is like choking me and then asking me to sing.
I chose to go back to work, in part, as a way to slow me down. I move too quickly — always have done. And in so doing I miss a lot. I don’t want to miss anymore. I don’t want to keep running so fast that I can’t see where the heck I am WHILE I’m running! I decided to stop moving like a bull toward my business goals. I decided to give up what “going for the gold” looks like in my life.
I had now decided to both save my ass, and hold my spiritual feet to the fire. As expected, this made me unhappy. So I spent a few weeks working with a therapist to get my head on straight, and then I went to the job.
The REENTRY was fucking miserable. It was like walking through a fever dream while furious. Yeah. Weird like that. Thank God we’re not emotionally see-through to *that* degree.
The RESULTS of returning to the J.O.B. at this place are fucking AMAZING.
I did NOT see this coming. I did not see positives coming from a J.O.B. I did not see the far-reaching emotional and psychological benefits of getting my financial feet back under me (sue me — it’s been a long and very deep road).
I did not see how getting a TV set and service for the first time in 7 years would return to me a certain sense of identity that I lost 7 years ago.
I did not see me getting myself back — in ways I am just now exploring — after such a long journey through the decades-long haunting of a family member’s illness and death, and my emotional breakdowns, homelessness, and feeling (and being) completely lost in a world of cruelty and anger and dumbassery I do NOT understand.
I had heard all of the spiritual “isms” — in my own head.
“Let go, let God” sounded good, but that hadn’t worked out for me. I guess it depends on what *kind* of letting go you do, and when.
No one tells you — probably because people don’t generally think about it — that when it comes to these “isms” (“Have faith!” “Follow your heart!” blah blah blah), it completely depends on how you *hear* them. Yeah, your individual mindset, your emotional setting, and the timing of when you are meant to “get it”, are utterly critical to how you can, or can’t, make use of these instructive snippets of diluted advice.
Jesus. If I had known this at 30… But then I wouldn’t have gone on the massive pilgrimage I’ve been on.
It’s time to sit in the hut at the end of the pilgrimage and bind up my bloody feet and eat some steaming hot soup while I watch the beautiful snow fall outside the window of my imaginary one-room goal: GOALLESSNESS.
Only from *this* place can I let go. Only from here can I let my gifts fall out and express themselves as they will and catch fire where they will and simply drift to the ground beautifully expressed and generally ignored by anyone but me. Only from here can I give up the mindset struggles I have done battle with for years.
Here — this time in my life — is my magic pill for giving up the curse of having a goal so defined, it stopped me from getting it. Now. Now is the time I get to allow all that is me to emerge.
Yesterday and today that feels like miracles. Literally. Like, “You mean *I’m* allowed to experience this???? This kind of ease? This kind of depth of understanding without suffering from my own thoughts? Really? Me???”
Yeah. Me.
The nature of my desire has changed: Now I not only want to be 100% out-loud, who-cares-if-you-don’t-like-it me, but I want to be at peace…in the flow of my life instead of trying to direct the thing with my goals.
You know this one? “You know how to make God laugh? Tell her your plans.”
God’s been laughing at me for a very, very, very long time.
The angels have been crying.
Which is interesting, since I was born into the Jewish faith. Do angels have religions?
In any case, everyone’s now in blissful meditation around me, happy to support me in my beautiful goallessness where whatever emerges is in perfect alignment with me, my heart, my desires. And all I have to do is…play.
