Blog 14

September, Intentionality, Messy Middle

As we step into September, I can feel a change coming over me in this season. The dust is beginning to settle from an apartment transition that took place over pretty much the entire month of August. We spent two weeks moving out of our old apartment and then spent the next two weeks unpacking and decorating; plus I had a trip to Colorado to see family in between. An exhaustion overcame me by the end of August. It was not just a physical exhaustion, but a mental exhaustion. I felt that I lacked the motivation to do anything except sit on our new patio that I had longed for at the old apartment for the entire time I lived there. 

But there was still work to be done and tasks to take care of, so I dragged myself the best I could through my daily responsibilities. Settling into the new place was a huge relief though. I felt that this change was coming for some time now. It was that type of feeling that you know something in your life is not quite fitting correctly, but you can’t pinpoint it exactly. 

I had been having that feeling for some time now. Maybe for the entirety of the time that I was in my last apartment which was about two and a half years. I felt drawn to creators who lived amongst nature, felt that I was drained from constant hustling, loud trains, and having to dodge sketchy looking people on almost every commute. And I when I say I longed for a patio, I longed for a patio; staring out the window on a daily basis, as I worked on my laptop, just wishing so badly that I could sit outside, under the sky, whether it be blue, white, grey, and if the air was hot, pleasant, or frigid. I loved my home, but I felt completely trapped there. 

You know when life is good enough? It is like you are happy, but there is a ceiling to that happiness. You know the life you are living is good enough, but you can feel there is a limit. And the only way to remove that limit, is that you have to change something major in your life. 

Well, I knew I loved living in Manhattan. It had been ten years. It was my lifestyle, my identity. I was a Manhattanite and really didn’t want to live in any other borough, unless it was Manhattan. 

But I could feel there was a cap to my happiness residing there, as who I was had changed. No longer did I need to fill my every day with busyness and distraction. No longer did the people on the street and in the subways who acted erratic and crazed seem like a comedic act. No longer did other pedestrians tailgating me give me a sense of excitement and a burst of adrenaline. My nervous system was shot from this constant hyperactivity. Always being aware, always moving fast, always hustling. 

I enjoyed it for a long time. And now I don’t. It really is as simple as that. 

So my boyfriend and I took our dog, our cat, and all of our belongings and moved upstate. 

Upstate!? 

My sense of pride as a Manhattanite scoffs. It says “that is for the people who couldn’t survive in Manhattan because their skin isn’t thick enough.”

So I shrugged my shoulders at it, and said “yeah, sure.” 

I don’t need life to be hard anymore. I don’t need life to be a struggle. To be exhausting. To be rushed. Life can be all of those things. But myself, like many of us nowadays, have this iron grip on life needing to be difficult to feel like we are worth something. We feel that if we let go of the need for life to be hard, we will shrivel up into useless humans. 

I let go. This was not an instantaneous process. This was unraveling over a grueling amount of years. My entire identity spun out, strewn all over the place, as I struggled intensely to put it back together. But as what happens when you haphazardly put back together a ball of yarn, it gets tangled, and jumbled, and falls all over the place again. And this was my struggle with my identity for the last 7 or so years. Falling apart, back together, falling apart, back together, falling apart, back together….

Until finally, I just let the entire ball of yarn completely unravel. That identity was not trying to put itself back together into what it had been. It was creating an entirely new identity. One that is more authentic to my true self. The one that was me as a young child.

Once it clicked, I went on the search for that child. I went looking for her wisdom and her talents. The activities she liked to do and how she looked at the world. I spent my time in the last apartment doing deep inner child work, and really connecting with that core part of my being. 

The truth became more and more apparent as I connected with her. Truths that modified what I need in my living environment. Truths that changed the course I want to take my business in. Truths that reminded me who I am and not who I think others want me to be.

When we moved apartments, it felt like a closing of a chapter. A period of my life that was so heavy and confusing. Going through a dark knight of the soul that completely stripped apart my being. I was coming out of it refreshed, renewed, and with profound clarity. 

My life upgraded massively, even though my expenses stayed about the same. What felt like a life of struggle, now feels like a life of ease. I can be outdoors when I want to. I feel safe in my neighbourhood. I don’t feel constantly bombarded by sounds when I leave my apartment. I could actually feel my entire nervous system settling. 

I was so stuck in a certain kind of life because I really did love it initially, but it just no longer fit. 

Life feels more easeful now. People talk about raising your frequency, and it really does feel that way. The life I have now makes me feel wealthier than the life I was living before. 

And with that, my standards are higher. My standards are higher for what I charge and what I am paid because my worth has increased by being in a new environment. I have clarity of mind in my business and the direction I want to take it because I believe I am worth pursuing the dream I envision. I am more confident in myself because I am no longer settling for less. 

As I settle into the new apartment, and the fog and exhaustion clears, I feel the new chapter in life beginning. There is this hyper clarity that comes after the fog lifts. 

I still don’t know exactly where that path leads, but there is clarity in the direction, projects, jobs, and identity. Which is the most important part. If we know ourselves and what we want, we can trust that just by being connected to that, we will be on exactly the right path. 

In the beginning of this month of September, I am remembering to not rush things. Although summer is coming to a close, it is not over. I am not rushing into the fall season just yet, as I relish in the last bits of summer we have for this year. The Halloween decorations, pumpkin lattes, and turtlenecks can wait. I am not rushing this transitional period, as I regain my footing and find my routine. I am not rushing this moment of focusing on the next thing, the next upgrade, the next success, as I will stay in awe of how lucky I am to be in a place in my life that was a mere dream only a year or two ago. I am saying this to remind myself that not everything has to be rushed. The seasons, the uncertainty, the success, the upgrades. We don’t always have to be onto the next thing. There is a beauty of really squeezing out every bit of the current situation we are in. Maybe the common trope of “life goes fast” isn’t the entirety of the truth. Maybe it is in how we live our lives that we decide the speed in which they move.