Field notes from the chaos

World fuckery, sedatives, and a new creation story

I’ve been wading through emotional molasses.

It’s a symptom of creative frustration.

It could also be caused by the state of world fuckery.

As an American living in Copenhagen, I’m on the outside looking into a perverse dictatorship thinly disguised as democracy.

The foundation of the United States - justice, liberty, equality, freedom - seems like a massive PR initiative. The disconnect between story and reality is discombobulating. Nothing new here, but it has reached new heights.

Trump and the web of influential ‘leaders’, from politicians to royalty, implicated in the Epstein files, give us an unabashed, unpolished, hard-to-swallow view of the machinations of politics and power.

No script, no story, no sugar-coated pill. It’s not about Republicans or Democrats, or the divisive stories for public consumption and distraction, but about a group of the richest and most powerful people in the world turning a blind eye to heinous crimes to protect their own interests.

Yet, there is another America, a country of immigrants, rebels, survivors and believers who want to create a better story not only for themselves, but for the country. We’re figuring out how to write it together.

The answer to destruction is creation.

It’s on us to build what comes next.

Bad Bunny, during the Super Bowl halftime show, showed how creativity, community, and fucking joy are an antidote to destructive forces.

When we dance, love, laugh, and sing together, we write the pages of a new love story.

But most of us aren’t dancing yet.

We need to move past our fears, past the script we were told to read, past the limits we set, often unconsciously, to see what we really want to create in the world.

As a creative coach, I’ve seen what happens when people create from their desires. They direct and pour their energy into creating art and building businesses that make a difference in the lives of others. As activist Fannie Lou Hamer said, “Nobody is free until everybody is free.” There is no separation between us.

What we create now will shape our collective story.

Often, what keeps us from creating is fear.

I know mine. It shakes me awake at 3am. It lures me to the couch. It’s seeing my mother only buy things on sale. It keeps me in small rooms with locked doors.

So I get the pull toward safety.

It’s easier to stay in the lane that’s been paved for us, take the safe route we’ve traveled so often that we don’t need Google Maps, believe someone else will set the right course, and create a just, beautiful, kind world. It’s easier to treat the wound with distraction and escapism—another episode of Industry with a glass of wine or three, scrolling random memes that keep us above water.

But shit, this just deepens that sinking, lost feeling; adds more weight to our shoulders, gives us strange dreams and indigestion.

At least I find it easier to slip into old, comfortable ways when the world is a dumpster fire, the smell of melted plastic making me gag.

In this slippery chaos, we desperately want something solid to hold onto. It’s tempting to revert to known comforts—not what we want, but what we settle for in exchange for a false sense of security. But it’s precisely now that we need to let go, trust, and create.

And conscious creativity requires courage.

Because it’s going to look different, require different versions of us, a shedding of old skins, jumping into a pickup with no built-in nav, wheels spinning dust into the air.

Creativity will ask us to take risks, be vulnerable, step it up, turn it up, and leave what we know behind.

I’m finding myself at this crossroad.

I’ve slipped back into comfortable ways of earning a living through what I know, advertising, which is not aligned with how I want to spend my one precious life, and the impact I want to make. I’ve been given a sedative, but I can hide it under my tongue, spit it out, and wake up, instead of believing it’s what I need to survive.

Swallowing the pill means sleepwalking through life, contracting instead of expanding, never finding out what I might create, and how that might change the course of my life, and maybe even history. It’s a flatline instead of a heartbeat.

I’m given another choice to make (again).

One road is clear and open, white lines showing me where I need to place my Bronco. The other is a haze of daisies and wheat stalks that requires a different version of myself. One who believes deeply in what she can achieve, in her limitless capability and creativity, and her fucking intuition. If she falls, she knows the future version of herself will catch her. Always.

This belief gives her a vulva of steel to take big risks and cliff jumps, and follow the breadcrumbs of her desires. And I’ll need it because I don’t know what it’s going to look like. I don’t know how it will unfold. I don’t even know what I’ll create next. Maybe I won’t even be aware of the impact I make, but I can still keep going.

Because what we’re drawn to create is the map.

If I ask myself what I want to create, even if I don’t know its colors and contours, I can see its shape. A book, poetry, connective-tissue conversations, helping phenomenal people bring their ideas into the world to make an impact.

I know it’s right because it feels like Bad Bunny removing his earpiece to hear everyone sing “DtMF” as they danced off the football field - like pure joy and excitement about what might be possible when we create together.

I used to think ‘not knowing’ stopped me, but the fear of letting go of comfort, of making the wrong decision, and limited visibility are the roadblocks.

Because I know.

And I bet you do too.

We get to build what comes next.

So, what will we create?

With love,