Okay hear me out…two words: Tiny. Home. I know I’m all over the place. What fun! Last week I was down to buy an RV/camper van (FTR, I still very much so am) and now I’m ready to sell everything, rent out my beloved home, and live in the Rockies in a 400 sq/ft shipping container. Gotta keep things spicy, amirite?? 

A few days ago I realized I was going to be able to hit my EOY financial goal if I just coast for the rest of the year and/or if I kept up with my current (accelerated) pace I could possibly hit it before we’re dancing around a midsummer field with flower crowns on our heads. Skol! The realization of the accessibility to a goal that I defined and set for myself shifted a lot of things in my brain chemistry. First, I realized, “fuck yes, you can do hard things. Use this as evidence to believe in yourself more in the future” (a skill I’ve been unfortunately lacking for much of the last 30 years). It also freed-up a generous amount of cognitive and emotional space in my brain and psyche, at which point I realized that I don’t have to wait until some undetermined and ambiguous point in the future to start living. I can live now. 

It seems absolutely wild that I’m 31 and truly don’t feel like I’ve ever truly lived. Starting all the way back in high school I did all the things I should do. Back then I actively tried to “check all the boxes” in order to get into a good college. Most of the universities I applied to I didn’t even want to go to; I just wanted to know whether I could compete with the other “smart kids” and get an acceptance letter of my own. Yet at the same time, I was so afraid of rejection that I didn’t pursue universities or areas of study I was actually interested in because I then opened myself up to the possibility of being rejected, or possibly even worse…wait listed. (God forbid uncertainty!) Despite my pre-emptive self imposed limitations, I still pursued all the things I was told or perceived to be the “right” or “smart” move.

By the end of my freshman year I had joined the medical sciences club with no intention of ever going into healthcare or studying anatomy and I acquired some long forgotten role on student council. I volunteered with the Lions Club, Habitat for Humanity, and a local non-profit that raised awareness to children and underserved families about nutrition (lol at my white saviorism bc I grew up on Swiss Rolls and Cosmic Brownies). I was a finalist in the state science fair for a research study that was later published in a scholarly journal. I cried into my goggles during the 500 freestyle in the fall and was a starter on the varsity tennis team in the spring. I naturally applied for as many AP classes as I could take because that was what was expected of me and tried out for the school performance of Anything Goes because why not I can do that too! While this set the stage for another decade and a half of unrelenting overachieving that inevitably resulted in burnout, I sure am impressed with the stamina 14 year old me had. Today I was ready for a nap by 9:14am. 

What I find incredibly infuriating about this reflection as an adult with hindsite awareness is that no one told me I HAD to do all these things. Sure there was the ambiguously imposed structure of what I “should” do to get into a good school, but at the end of the day my parents just wanted me to be happy and “successful” in whatever way that looked for me. And if that meant forfeiting all my AP classes so I didn’t have to stay up until 2am studying or hanging up my white “future doctor’s jacket” with our names embroidered on it they would have supported me. Sure they wanted me to go to college. Of course they expected me to get good grades. But they wanted my extracurriculars to be exciting and engaging for me because they elicit curiosity and interest and joy. No, the pressure imposed upon me overwhelmingly came from within. I constantly challenged myself to do more and achieve this or that because I felt like I had something to prove to everyone else, and once I proved it to “THEM” that I was capable THEN I would have succeeded in proving it to myself. 

The truth is, I always felt like a failure. Sure I got decent grades but I was never top of the class. Sure I was on student council, but I wasn’t president or VP (I think I had some bs role like secretary or something like that). Sure I was a starting freshman on the tennis team, but I didn’t play in the top seed doubles match. Being the youngest in the second seed doubles team was not a glimmer of a thought in my mind. I was constantly hyper-aware that I was “good”, but never felt “good enough” for my own self imposed standards. We could explore why these rigid and unforgiving standards formed in the first place, but I’ll reserve that menty b for my next therapy session. Point being, I haven’t “lived in the moment” for as long as I can remember. I was always trying to force myself to be something else – something that I perceived as “better” than simply where, who, and what I was at any given point in time. 

Once the simple days of high school and college faded into the sunset it became the classic rush to the next promotion, pay raise, and line item on my resume. I’ve always believed myself to be a hard worker, yet simultaneously never felt like one and definitely never identified as one. My motions continued to be performative – “I have been in this role for 7 years and have received 5 promotions, therefore others will see me as hardworking, committed, successful, and bright” or “I have presented at X conferences therefore others in my space see me as a informational leader within the industry.” At no point in time did I have even the hint of a narrative that mimicked, “I’m here because I deserve to be. I am here because I want to be. I am here because this is what I want for myself.” It’s possible that I might be exaggerating here, because I was super pumped early on in my career. But as Monica Garcia from RHoSLC would say, “mo’ money mo’ problems, guuurl” (unpopular and completely unrelated opinion: I want Monica back. She brought new life to the show. Summer should be fun!). 

I think it’s highly possible that I initially had intrinsic desire and meaning, but over time I fed off of the excitement and professional success and fell back into by lifelong habit of going through the motions of always “doing the most” because I was on a mission to prove something to myself by proving something to others. I wanted to be seen as a passionate and hardworking visionary who was the subject matter expert in her space at all times. I wanted a permanent spot on the champions podium. As I eventually learned while studying renewable energy in grad school, nothing works at 100% efficiency and certainly not 100% of the time. But of course the laws of physics didn’t apply to me! Of course not. It’s painfully ironic that I had passion and commitment and excitement and curiosity, but my unwaveringly rigid expectations for myself to be all those things all the time completely sapped my being of it all. Slowly, over time and under pressure, it all…just…eroded. 

And so the numbness crept in. Cue the depression and anxiety! (Isn’t it soooo fun being a m/zillennial?? Shout out to the GenZer’s who saw through the bs long before I ever did. I want yalls’ confidence.) Ignoring all other contributing life factors for a moment, the fact remains that I allowed myself to become a fossilized version of myself – a physical embodiment of a memory. The frightening reality is that I think there is a part of me that has been lost forever. She gone!

While the permanence of loss scares the shit out of me, I’m slowly learning that the absence of something simply creates space for something new. The dreamer part of me is longing to seize that space for something truly powerful, beautiful, and sustainable. Something that flourishes because it accepts the laws of second law of thermodynamics rather than rejects it. **self-growth lesson number one: don’t try to fight the universe; she will always win.**

So! In classic C fashion, we’ve gone all over the place to hopefully land somewhere near where I initially intended, which was: Tiny home. It’s kind of a joke, but also kind of not. At the very least it’s representative of the potential paths that are laid out in front of me. About six months ago I completed an Expansive Leadership course (shout out to Judy at The Center for Expansive Leadership – her course really ACTivated me into, you guessed it, action. I basically consider her to be my self-growth fairy godmother). Anyways, early on in the course we were tasked with identifying our core values. She had an involved process for how to sort through all the values on the table and through a series of steps filter down to identify the 3-5 that are the most core to the person you are today (note: much to my chagrin, our values can and likely will change over time so we should always stay attuned with how our core self is evolving). I landed with a top 4 of: 

• Connection, 
• Tranquility, 
• Fairness, 
• Exploration. 

My personal power lies within these four elements. 

I’m learning, and very slowly trying to internalize, that these values should drive as many of my actions and decisions in life (TW! Again, C, in case you missed the core lesson discussed above, you do not…I repeat, DO NOT….need to be perfect in this. WWMTS? “Eliminate the word PERFECT from your lexicon.”). All I need to do is try to incorporate my core values into my decisions and actions more than I previously have. If I keep up with this pattern, eventually I’ll have transformed into someone unrecognizable to my past self. I will have filled in that concave fossil with a far more beautiful, powerful, and sustainable version of myself than ever existed before. #evolution #scienceisreal #dont@me

So doesn’t the idea of a tiny home community seem SO CUTE????!!!! Just imagine the sense Connection that could be experienced with like minded individuals sharing the same space and lifestyle. A lifestyle that prioritizes Tranquility over the turbulence of expectations and performance. A space that embodies Fairness by not taking up more space and resources than we need and refraining from squeezing every last ounce of expectation out of ourselves and others – does that not sound beautiful?? (If not a little culty, I’m aware of this. But I’m one of the good ones! I swear! I wonder if that’s what they all say…) Just imagine the mental and financial latitude this kind of system would enable, freeing up time and energy to Explore – the land, our minds, our interests? And do I not owe it to myself to lean into the Exploration of self and life and [however] seriously consider this transition? Would it not be only Fair to myself to seek Connection with the part of me that I’m actively creating out of intentionality? Does honoring the potential within me not sound like Tranquility? Idk about yall, but I’ve fully convinced myself. 

Perfectionism and the compulsive need to always do more or be better slowly kills the purest parts of you if left unchecked. There’s so much dark irony in the strive for achievement’s hyper-emphasis on the future performance that you’re chronically disappointed in the present. Perfectionism is often driven by a fear of failure, but the painful reality is that this approach sets you up for failure before you’ve already begun because you’re already failing at controlling the only thing you actually have control over: the present. How fucking sad. If I could have just a single moment with past me I’d hug her and say, “You are enough just as you are. Perfection does not exist. Let yourself breathe now. Let yourself live now.”

So here’s to taking my own advice, I suppose. Time to live now. 

Rant summary: 

• You’re never going to overpower physics.
  If you try…..lol fuq around and find out. 
• Staunchly rigid expectations of self slowly kills off parts of your spirit.
  As a vegetarian I hate the saying, “beating a dead horse”, but for the sake of the metaphor, if you spend all your energy beating the horse then you too can wither away from exhaustion leaving in the end neither horse nor rider. 
• Evolve – With death comes rebirth and opportunity to create anew. Sometimes the end of something is really just the beginning of something else. Embrace the excitement in transition and creation because we owe it to ourselves to define the life we want for ourselves. We’re gonna be miserable forever if we keep trying to get different outcomes from the same equation (my god, I’ve never had so many STEM references in my brain at one time before. Who is SHE????). 
• Live by your core values as often as you can.
  Bc otherwise what’s the fuggin point. 
• Live now.
  Periodt.