Field notes from the edge

Decaying situations, pasta-stained conversations, and creative evolution

I’ve been feeling weird lately. A heavy wool blanket around my shoulders while I stand in the middle of an empty road covered in fog, kind of feeling. Every now and then, a deer jets past.

I’m still eating oatmeal, going to the gym, writing, kissing my partner before I leave, but something has shaken loose within. Rolling around like coins in a dryer.

I don’t know if it’s the crumbling of a world order, perimenopause, heightened sensitivity, or just the general feeling of unease that comes with a clusterfuck of change.

Before creation, destruction. Something is dying to make way for the next creative evolution.

But into what, exactly, has yet to be created.

Sometimes, parts of us need to die, not just be improved, to birth our becoming — especially when we've become comfortable in what used to scratch and itch.

We need to ask ourselves: Are we trying to stay in a decaying situation that’s completed its natural lifecycle? Exhaustion and drain are signs. Our bodies send signals when we’re drinking milk past its expiration date.

Now, it’s time for the next tumble, mascara-stained and messy bunned, into whatever's next.

Recently, I was asked what I really want.

My wants are spread across a teenager’s room, covering the shag carpet, piled on a chair, stacked in dog-eared books, and curling, overlapping posters. It’s hard to make sense of the mess; to see what’s mine and what I’ve inherited or bought second-hand. But it’s getting clearer as I inspect them, turning the wants over in my palm, burning fresh rain incense to mask the hormonal BO, and sitting with the unease of razing things to the ground so I can create what’s next.

I'm still sorting through it because I've outgrown that teenage room. Going after what I want now means old ways of thinking, being, and moving have to die.

Once I know what I really want, not what I’ve limited myself to, I get to just go for it. No fight, sweat rolling down my temples, to allow myself to have it. No exhausting trial to prove my worth. No second-guessing or triple-checking to give it to myself. Nah.

That part of me is on death row, doing jazz hands and telling bad jokes to stay alive. When that doesn’t work, she reverts to fear, embodying an ex-boyfriend who told me all the ways I wouldn’t survive without him.

I want to build a business that feels like dancing in the kitchen to Doechii, deep conversations in pasta-stained t-shirts, breakdowns that lead to breakthroughs, the bloody mess of midwifing what people want to bring into the world. It doesn’t feel like work, but arm hair-raising purpose and play.

This requires shaking off beliefs that keep me in decaying situations.

One such belief: financial security means settling, pouring my energy into companies with deep pockets and shallow sense of purpose.

If we’re settling for a six out of ten, we’ll never reach ten. How can we? There’s only four left after our energy maintained a six.

How will opportunities and ideas find us if we’re knee-deep in a six? If we’ve told ourselves stories that keep us gagging in a decomposing situation? I think we know the answer to that, dear reader.

The only way to create my ten is to go all in. Suck the marrow out of life’s bones. Write and live a new belief: I build wealth and freedom from work that sets me on fire.

After three years of building Kollektiv Studio, I’ve shown myself it’s possible. When I start to feel nauseous, I can throw overripe bananas and moldy bread in the bin, and clear the space. I get to make a choice, having no idea what I’ll create next or how it will work.

When we’re in the middle of chaos and destruction, creativity is the cure.

But we need to recognize if we’re staying in the rot because its familiarity feels more secure than the unknown.

So, what do you really want?

And what might need to die for you to create it?

Keep creating,

P.S. We don’t have to create and build alone.