As I’ve gotten busier in recent weeks, I’ve found myself thinking in vignettes; wrestling more with images and feelings rather than trying to articulate specific thoughts.
So this week’s newsletter comes to you in three separate but connected threads. I quite enjoyed writing it this way, and may do it more often.
1
If someone were to ask, "How do you do things?", my answer would be, "By myself."
I imagine other people might say things like, "To the best of my ability," or, "With enthusiasm."
Perhaps a smart-ass might say, "Reluctantly."
I was recently labouring through a pile of ironing when realised that I—by default—am always imagining myself as a singular entity. This is despite the fact that I have always wished I was closer to others, whether it's friends, family, or the people I work with. This is despite my deep belief that connection and community are core to living a meaningful life.
I started thinking about this because someone recently asked me if I would be keen to work on something together. As the question surfaced, I felt a fear rising from my gut and constricting in my throat.
I was curious about this, because there was literally a person in front of me, saying, "Would you like to do this with me?"
And all I could think of was, "Shit, what if I'm not able to make this succeed?"
As though this was something I had been asked to do on my own.
2
There is a specific childhood memory that returns to me from time to time. Whether or not this actually happened, I cannot say. But the details are always the same.
I am in kindergarten, and I am sitting at the back of the class. In my mind, I am just minding my own business. Existing. Out of nowhere, the teacher calls on me to do something for my classmates—they need help arranging some chairs in the right order; try as they might, they just can't seem to do it correctly.
Suddenly, I'm annoyed. I'm annoyed because, in this memory, arranging the chairs in the right order is something I've showed my classmates over and over again. In dramatic, child-like fashion, I roll my eyes, get up, arrange the chairs for them, and mumble under my breath, "... So irritating."
Again, I'm not entirely sure that this really happened. But many moments in my life have felt this way: that others just don't get how the chairs are supposed to be arranged, and I'm annoyed that I always have to be the one to fix it.
Nothing about this narrative is true of course. It is just what I internalised and accepted for as long as I can remember.
As I've become more aware of this, I've begun to notice how this has shaped the ways in which I resist help and invitations. People will ask me what I need or how they can support me, and I'll say, "I'll let you know," and never get back to them.
I used to think that this was about self-reliance, and that it was because I believed I had to do everything myself. Only much later did I realise this was about trust; that I have a hard time trusting others to do things the way I want them to be done. I simply don't want to risk having others fall short of my expectations.
On the flip side, when I do decide to trust others, I expect them to be perfect—to know what I'm thinking and to see the world exactly as I do. Which is silly, because we will all disappoint each other eventually, and the point is not to be perfect. The point is to keep building, repairing, negotiating.
Relationships, I'm learning, are not about arriving at a thing and realising that you are happy. We like to talk about 'finding love', but when I think of how relationships are fundamentally about a kind of striving towards, and about having the courage to keep going, then I wonder if perhaps love is not something to be found. Instead, love is what finds us along the way.
Maybe this is something my childhood self did not understand—it was never about getting it right or fixing anything. It was just about helping.
As an adult, I now also understand that it is not always other people who are the problem. Sometimes and often, the problem is me. The good news is that I can't change other people, but I can change myself.
3
Two individuals and their stories have been on my mind for the past week. In the first, they went through a divorce and lost not just their spouse but also their entire social circle. In the second, they lost their job and not just their income, but also their entire sense of identity and life's purpose.
Because of the work that I do, it can be easy to think that what these people need is help. They need coaching, individualised support, reflection, and to take powerful action to create change and rebuild their lives. The more I think about this, the more it doesn't seem quite right.
Of course we are each responsible for our own lives, but there is also something happening on a societal level that is leading to a kind of deep disconnection many people seem to be facing.
Recently, I had flashback to what life was like when I still worked in tech: every day was a confusion of Slack messages and back-to-back meetings, with the actual work squeezed into the gaps between. I had to execute things at an operational level, but also plan strategy, gather data, break things down to first-principles, all while trying to practise empathy and active listening when engaging with others.
So much of modern work looks like that these days, and we are constantly distracted, over-stimulated, and rushing from one thing to the next. It's no wonder people just want to order in, doom-scroll, and zone out to Netflix at the end of a long day. All while feeling we should be doing more to pursue personal growth.
It made me think about whether we need more discipline and motivation, or whether what we really need is a new vision for modern life. Where it's not just about scale and quantity and more more more, but also about going deep and slowing/scaling down.
What might that look like?
Or to ask the question differently: do we need more therapy, or do we need more hobbies (and the time to do them, and people to do them with)?
4
Not a thread but a quote. I just finished Gabrielle Zevin's The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry and loved it. I have not felt this way about a book for a long time; when I finished it, it felt as though something inside me shifted, realigned, clicked back into place.
The last time I felt this way, it was right after surfing and indomie, and I was wrapped in a towel on the beach in Bali. I had been freezing the whole time I was in the sea, and was finally warm again after some food and laughter. There was a moment amidst all the activity—I felt the wind on my face, the toasty prickliness on my skin as the salt water evaporated—when I exhaled and it was suddenly clear to me what mattered.
I'm a little peeved that this novel didn't get quite as much attention as Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, but perhaps this also makes the book a little more special to me.
Anyhow, this seems like a good place to end on:
"It is the secret fear that we are unlovable that isolates us, but it is only because we are isolated that we think we are unlovable ... Someday, you do not know when, you will be driving down a road. And someday, you do not know when, he, or indeed she, will be there. You will be loved because for the first time in your life, you will truly not be alone. You will have chosen to not be alone."
— The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry, Gabrielle Zevin
I’ll see you at the next one 👋🏻
PS. As always, if you are keen to work with me, don’t hesitate to get in touch.
Thanks Julian for sharing the about A. J. Fikry, what a wonderful read it was, it's such a joy, and A. J. would savour your short stories 🍓
I suspect that we don't need 'more' of anything - we need less.