Category: Emotional Work

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Emotional Work

Day 495 and Drained

I’m so exhausted from the emotional processing I’ve done with husband about moving to Montana from Colorado. I finally understand why HGTV is so popular as trying to buy a home is an extremely intense experience. It brings up all of your core fears and needs and damn if that doesn’t make for good drama. But today we put an offer on a farmhouse in the Hyalite area of Bozeman Montana.

We’ve already lost two houses after we’ve put in offers (including one that was accepted). We don’t trust that anything will weird. fully expect that the offer won’t be accepted and that we will get outbid. And even if we do win we’ve likely bought at the top of the market. I have all the worst case scenarios mapped in my head.

We expect the house to be under water for a few years as it’s possible we are buying at the top of the market, but that ultimately this is an investment in a forever home that we will be in for a decade, or God willing, many decades. If the recession of the next few years dings us we will make the most of it.

It’s been a journey as my husband and I have very different risk profiles. It’s actually the primary reason we are married. He sees to the downside protection and I look to the long term upside. I am a long term investor and someone who enjoys cultivating. I like to nurture people, plants, animals and the land over time. My husband is much more of a clear roadmap type. He likes to know exactly what he is getting and what inputs yield what outputs. I’m a bit of the chaos magic and he is a bit of the ritual right hand path type.

We also just have very different taste. I don’t mind a bit of a mess and a bit of a diamond in the rough. My husband loves luxury finishes and beautiful decor. Aligning my needs for a piece of property that leans towards resilience with his desire for a beautiful home meant we found it to be a bit more expensive than if we just optimized for my needs. Yes for once the wife is the cheaper lower maintenance one.

But after 18 months of researching and searching and trying to figure out the balance of all our needs I’m just so damn tired. We are a bit battle scarred from the years of researching where we want to put down roots. We did a full country search mapped against weather, geography, water, fire, earthquakes, political instability, proximity to cultural we value and about a dozen other factors.

We quickly said no to the South as I dislike heat and neither of us are willing to live in a Bible Belt state. New England was considered and ultimately discarded as my husband doesn’t like forests. California never made it on the last. Oregon got axed for instability and fires. Wyoming is too much badlands. Idaho got nixed because of the Nazis. Washington was too raining and wet. Michigan didn’t make it because the good land is so remote and Ann Arbor is a political capital. When I say we considered everything I mean it. Montana came out on top again and again.

If you are inclined to prayer I could use them. I am hoping our offer is accepted and we can begin this next chapter in our life. I’ve got no idea if this will work out or not but the only way to find out is to do it.

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Emotional Work

Day 494 and A Place to Stand

It took me a long time to come to terms with the idea of investing in a home. I’ve moved 38 times over the course of my life. The constant instability in my childhood gave me the capacity to tolerate a lot of uncertainty. It’s an incredible piece of leverage for living life. But it’s a super power born out of trauma.

Give me a place to stand, a lever long enough and a fulcrum and I can move the Earth

Archimedes

When your normal is starting over again and again, eventually you become comfortable living in chaos. I can achieve a lot things fall apart and life starts anew. It’s why I work with early stage startups. The current market and the volatility inherent in the chaos makes me feel safe.

But there are limits to chaos. I can’t live in it perpetually and make gains without some kind of safe harbor. Otherwise it’s just a repeat of my childhood and I’ll constantly be starting from zero. What I really want is a safe home so I can take advantage of the chaos around me. I want a place to stand so I can move the world. While everyone else is out surviving the chaos I want to have a firm ground under my feet.

The world is going through massive changes and constant upheaval. That’s an opportunity of a lifetime. All of those moves I made prepared me to shine during this moment. But if I cannot have some about of safety, the land on which to stand, then I’ll merely be surviving yet another move. And I’m over that. This time the world moves for me.

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Emotional Work

Day 493 and Processing

I don’t particularly feel like writing today. I’ve been processing a lot of emotions being up on Montana. Where do I want to live? Who do I want with me? What am I willing to spend? How do all of my preferences and goals intersect with my husband’s goals and preferences? How do we integrate those? How do we make Montana home?

It’s funny because you’d think we’d have this all worked out by now as we’ve been looking at buying a homestead for a while. We’ve already lost two houses in Colorado in our search to buy. But somehow all that work has to be done again but this time in Montana! As you’d expect, context and circumstances can change a lot even if all the basic facts remain the same.

I often feel like Alex and I cosplay being a normal married couple. We look like totally average white yuppies. But if you get down to how we actually feel about so much of the basics in life we are so far from normal it’s comical. And that affects how we approach something like buying a home.

I’m somewhat sanguine about making a decision right away. We found a house that has most of what I want but it’s more than we wanted to spend. But even when we look at more economical houses the realization that any kind of commitment in Montana feels different. Processing how we feel about a new town and a new state is just going to take the time that it takes.

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Emotional Work

Day 487 and Grocery Stores

I love settling into a new home by going grocery shopping. I’ve had the opportunity to be in a new city for an extended period twice now this year. And each time the joy I’ve taken in going to pick up groceries is palpable. Going shopping for food is my happy place.

I’m in Bozeman with dear friends and one of them noticed just how excited I was for the grocery run. We had a mostly empty fridge and I made a beeline to the nicest grocery store in town. It was a hybrid fancy yuppie grocery wrapped inside a big box grocery store. It’s a chain local to the pacific and mountain west called Rosaurs. I highly recommend it.

A grocery store is a powerful space. I’ve written before about my love for the American grocery store. I think it’s unique in its position as a functional and emotional retail space. It needs enough structure and repeatable patterns that anyone can shop a store and have an intuitive sense of where the basics are merchandised. But grocery relies on novelty and newness as much as any other retail store for driving order size and additional Martin.

The presentation of new brands and new products is fraught. The need to display something new competes against the need for repeatability and ease of locating core items in grocery. Grocery can be seen as human nature reflecting core tensions as it balances desire and safety. We yearn to feel nurtured by food but also crave to be stimulated by new tastes.

I spent an hour and a half wandering the aisles filling out my grocery list. I had done meal planning and had specific needs for the weeks meals. But I am also an inveterate shopper looking to feel excited by what was on the shelves.

To this day that I can look at any item in the store and buy it remains a surprise to me. It’s a luxury that never fails to delight me. If I want to get something I can. There is no budget or restriction on me like I remember as a small child. And yet I still couldn’t bring myself to buy a full size Turmeric spice jar. Reflecting back childhood emotions I didn’t even realize I had. A small reminder of how much seemingly mundane acts like grocery shopping can reflect much bigger things.

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Aesthetics Emotional Work

Day 481 and The Mood

There is a scene in Dune where heir apparent Paul Atreides is dismissing the danger he is in from the Harkonnens. He tells his instructor he is “not in the mood” to train.

It proceeds to be a standard issue coming of age issue. Paul realized being responsible means finding the mood if the need arises. The circle of manhood. You’ve read Joseph Campbell too so you can fill in the hero’s journey.

But I’ve recently noticed an uptick of people not being in the mood. This isn’t for lack of desire to build and and will manifest. People are exhausted by the increasing chaos. The entropy pulling on all of our lives is weighing on us. People have let big life decisions go by as the uncertainty plays out. We want to stop to attend to those problems. We’ve got health issues we’ve not checked out. We’ve got family members who are struggling. We’ve put off buying homes and making trips and investing in things b

But we cannot let the pace and uncertainty of the now prevent us from setting the foundations for our future. We may not be in the mood. We may be tired and scared and overwhelmed. But the occasions that require action do not care for our moods.

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Emotional Work

Day 480 and Responsibility

I usually have therapy on Mondays. I stack all my emotional work into the first day of the week so I can be my most present for everyone in my life. But today I just couldn’t show up for my emotional work. I’m in a lot of pain and a bunch of things are up in the air professionally and personally. I’m just not able to be here.

Thankfully I’m lucky enough to be surrounded by people who are working on deepening their emotional practice. Someone was able to help me see that I wasn’t able to show up even though I physically showed up. They did it with one insight too.

Responsibility is having ability to respond

One insight and my mind was blown 🤯. In that moment I didn’t realize I didn’t have the ability to respond. I was abdicating responsibility. I was reactive. It wasn’t under my control. I couldn’t preserve my ability to today today. I was not preserving my response ability.

I quietly bowed out of therapy for the evening. Well not so quietly I cried a little and shared my disappointment. I needed to take responsibility for myself in that moment. So in order to preserve my capacity to respond I had to make the decision to bow out. I needed to be the adult that would take care of whatever portion of me was incapable of working through the physical pain of that moment. My inner child needed me to parent and I did. Now hopefully I can continue that streak through mealtime, bath time and bedtime so that my adult and my inner child can respond to the best of our ability to tomorrow.

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Emotional Work

Day 473 and Technical Difficulty

I have a long-standing appointment on Monday. It’s had the same Zoom link for almost two years now. A function of pandemic necessity has made this link one of the anchors of my calendar.

It wasn’t working today. I got on at 415pm and was faced with a “host is in other meeting” sign. I thought ok whatever I’ll wait. But then I started to blame myself. Maybe I got the link wrong? I went back to my calendar and clicked in. Still wasn’t working. Let me reboot the application. Still isn’t working.

Needless to say my mind kept winding itself up about all the ways in which this minor technical hangup was obviously my fault. This despite any significant amount of evidence that it was in fact a mistake or error on my part.

And it’s just a fascinating thing to see how much I’m willing to accept all of the blame for something. Even in an instance where I bear no responsibility at all for the outcome. I suspect I’m not alone in this. The feminine urge to apologize is a punch line. Hell it just made it into Saturday Night Live joke this week. Ironic as Lizzo was hosting and she is one of the least apologetic woman I’ve ever seen.

I’d like to think it’s a kind of small narcissism that drives these obsessions with being at fault. To think that we have so much power everything that has gone wrong must be directly attributable to our actions. Except women being gluttons for punishment couldn’t ever enjoy the fun kind of narcissism where everything is a function of your genius. I’d love that on the next lifetime if I’m honest.

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Emotional Work Startups

Day 466 and A Painting Without Shadows

I take therapy really seriously. I’d put being emotionally capable of managing myself at the very top of my life priorities. Honestly it should be number one and if it isn’t I need to stop and ask myself why. Being an adult requires an intimate understand of one’s emotions and the capacity to share them with others.

To further this goal I do a weekly session as well as group work. It’s meaningful to me and I recommend to all my founders that they find a way to get into coaching as well as therapy. Taking care of your own inner child is the only way you are going to be able to lead a team. If you want to build a billion dollar company and manage thousands of people you better be able to manage yourself first.

Where I think people can go wrong is treating this process as if it’s one of optimization. Do I think founders who have taken the time to understand themselves do better? Absolutely. It’s pretty rare that someone’s coping mechanisms help them reach the heights of their talents. A chip on your shoulder is great but eventually you learn to transcend it.

I think this is because if you don’t understand yourself you are a painting without shadows. It’s flat. Boring. Doesn’t read as true or trustworthy. Maybe you are really good at showing emotions to get your way. Lots of people are but if they just off enough from genuine then it reads as the uncanny valley of empathy. People just know when you are hiding something. And hiding your dark side means hiding your shadows. Without them you are a flat human.

A painting without shadows wouldn’t be any good. You without your shadows wouldn’t be who you are. The best of you exists because of the worst of you. I really do hope more people are able to see that truth and love themselves.

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Emotional Work

Day 462 and Action is Not Power

Action equals power in America. But at the risk of repeating some basic definitional shit, action is action. Power is power. They are not the same thing. I have a bias towards action as the famous Amazon aphorism goes. I think action is often a beneficial force. But I am learning that sometimes I need to be still in my power without turning to action.

It’s a challenging concept for me. I have more power by allowing it to flow through me. But I prefer taking action to acquire it. I’m in an industry and country where no one is ever satisfied. The need to acquire more is a looming mimetic desire. And the clearest path we see to acquiring more? Take action! Do a thing. Make a move. Be a player.

But sometimes power is found in stillness. The slow places. The quiet places. The interiors of our lives. We meditate and contemplate. All these practices can help us access the power we already have inside us. The capacity that existed all along and simply needed to be honed.

I wanted to beat myself for not seizing more power recently. Why wasn’t I being more aggressive? And then I realized I already had everything I needed in me. I don’t mean this as some bullshit thought leadering either. I slept till 1pm today because I was out late last night. I needed the stillness and rest so my own power can through. I could have been up and seizing the day but that would have only resulted in action and not power.

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Emotional Work

Day 457 and Pedicure

I did something today I haven’t done in two years. I got my nails done. And it felt so luxurious and yet also somehow normal. This regular act of grooming had once been a staple self care activity but today felt transformed into a ritual of joy.

I feel free and lucky in this moment. Getting a pedicure done means I have someplace to be where someone will see me. It means I am healthy enough to be going somewhere. It means I have a desire to be somewhere. All this cascading luck mixed to show me that my life was ok. I felt so much gratitude and self love in that moment. I am ok. The ok-ness of the universe in an act.

I know it sounds heady and existential and also a bit ridiculous as I elevate the act of a pedicure. But truly I feel so good about where I am in life that I can get my toes painted coral.

Also it’d worth noting that less glamorously cutting my toenails is hard for me to do on my own because of my spondylitis. So a necessity and a luxury in its own physical way. It is a quality of life improvement. So I’m grateful that this is where I am. May we all get little joys of normal in this chaotic world.