Field notes for the airbound

Desires as direction, bitten nails, and running jumps

I’m at the Nescafe coffee station wondering why we don’t have a proper espresso machine. A shiny steel one that steams and froths. I work at a creative agency, so you’d think that would be a given.

It’s 2021, I’m staring at my MacBook, working on a pitch deck, a strange weight in my abdomen. The fluorescent overhead light and the attempt to make an idea more palatable (ahem, safer) after a tissue session drain me.

As a commercial creative, I know it takes courage to craft the unexpected, an idea that captures people’s attention, and a willingness to go where others wouldn’t, trusting gut feels as much as data sets.

It used to light me the fuck up, Burning Man style.

Now, my thumb is raw from trying to flick the spark wheel.

And I have no idea what to do about it.

There’s a voice in my head that says, in a high-pitched whine, you have everything you’ve wanted. I work as a creative director with a cushy salary. I’ve won awards, sat on juries, pitched until my mouth was dry, did the dance.

This voice from the past is listing everything I used to want.

I don’t know what I want anymore.

I don’t know because I’m no longer who I used to be, but not yet who I’m becoming.

I have no idea what kind of business I’d build, where I’d get clients from, or what I’d talk about after fifteen years of writing and creating for others.

Fear tethers me to the black ergonomic rolling chair.

I meet with my mentor, who says, “It’s easy to start your own thing. Get an accounting app, meet with your network. It will come.”

I stay in a holding pattern, waiting for something to happen. A shift in planetary positions. A surprise inheritance from a rich great uncle. Something that means I don’t have to take the risk, and flail in the air.

While at the agency, I start a coaching certification, move closer to myself, and toward a new expression of creativity. But I am still wedged between the whiteboard and Post-its, stuck in good enough, biting my nails.

I speak to my friends about starting my own thing, but find excuses about why now isn’t the right time. The bravery I applied to my work was glaringly absent when it came to applying it to my life. Because, really, I’m okay. I’m still doing what feels like kismet — creative work. The guilt of wanting more keeps me in place.

Everything changed when my mother died suddenly.

There was no more waiting, because time would eventually run out, and I had no idea when that would happen. What I had been most afraid of — the unknown disguised as failure — was nothing compared to the grim reaper. The ultimate unknown. Sitting for hours and stagnating is a slower death.

Quitting my job and taking a shot, placing all the chips on my number, and building my own business was laughable in comparison. Isn’t that what this whole life thing is about? Trying, experimenting, playing?

Four years later, I feel more alive and fulfilled, still scared sometimes, than ever.

Since then, I keep making more big moves, pulled by my desires, and I don’t need death or dramatic events to push me off the ledge.

I started building my fuck-it-just-do-the-thing calf muscles. This compounded strength, along with coaches, creative partners, and my therapist, helps me take running jumps (with my husband and besties cheering me on).

Partnership reconnects us to what makes us feel alive and helps us take the big, flailing leap to bring it to the world.

What does it take to create braver work and bigger lives?

A different version of us.

Not the one who successfully created the business, the art piece, the creative venture. Not the version who took us there. We need our future self to take it from here.

It’s hard to let go of an identity, especially one that knows how to do this thing right here so well. But this thing has gotten stale, like sourdough bread left unwrapped on the counter.

We’ve done it before, often again and again.

The routine lulls us, wraps us in a down comforter on a Sunday morning with no alarm set. It’s dangerously comfortable. There’s nothing wrong with comfort. Sometimes, that’s exactly what we need as we stretch between now and next, but not when we’re luxuriating in the now with bedhead and garlicky morning breath from last night’s Thai takeout.

We don’t figure it out by waiting to have some shining insight served on a platter like a roasted chicken in Victorian times. We figure it out by doing it. Not the whole thing, we’d get indigestion. One small bite at a time. Or a big action, the one our bodies have been screaming for, which we’ve muffled like expert kidnappers.

It starts with asking yourself what you want.

Your desires are yours for a reason.

There’s a reason I’m not drawn to crunching numbers or writing the small print on a contract. My desires are encoded in my DNA. I’ve been drawn to creativity my entire life, since hosting my radio show, “Anything Goes,” at twelve, and workshopping poetry in college.

But I needed to break the glass on the box I put creativity and myself in. Define what it means to me. Create evidence that there’s another way. And find the way by walking it.

My clients sometimes ask me how to find their voice, and I tell them, “You find your voice by using it.” That’s the way.

The dream won’t come prepared and packaged, delivered by an Amazon driver. It’s a continuous, thrilling practice to rediscover the next version and level — of who we are and what we can do.

Expansion = fulfillment, even if it might not always look or feel like progress.

This growth makes us feel alive.

And that’s what we’re here for — to feel gloriously and insatiably alive.

That’s what I creatively partner with people to do — reconnect to that feeling and find what shape it wants to take now. Helping rebellious, high-octane, meaty vision people create bigger, braver, breakthrough work and lives.

What the partnership looks like depends on what you need — sometimes deep coaching, sometimes co-creating the work, often both moving together.

I coach the person to become who they need to be to take the next big step toward their desires. Then, I partner with them to create what they’re put here to do.

The right partnership doesn’t just shape the work, it shapes you (and us).

So if any of this landed hard, let’s talk. Book a chemistry call, no strings, just curiosity, and step into what you’re itching to make real in the world.

Keep creating,