Moving On Up
Some thoughts on constraint and capacity
Dear Brilliant Friends,
For the past six months my family and I have been living in a 300 square foot (32m2) apartment while our house has been through a major remodel. To say we were unprepared for this is the proverbial understatement. Luckily we all love each other, more importantly we all like each other. Now we are finally starting to see the end in sight and moving back to our house becomes closer and closer to reality. There was a point where I seriously thought all of our stuff would never not be covered in plastic and covered in dust.
We’re super fortunate that we had an apartment to stay in all this time. Even more fortunate that when we redid the entire electricity, our electricians discovered an exposed wire behind the walls and that luckily neither my husband or I didn’t hammer into that exact spot when hanging a picture on the wall, as that most likely would’ve been the end for us. So cheers to not getting electrocuted in our own home when hanging up art!
For the past six almost seven years I’ve been running my business from the dining room table or from a tiny drop down desk in our bedroom. The idea that I will finally have a desk of my own where I won’t have to move my work so that we can eat breakfast, lunch and dinner, or close up the desk to sleep is so close that it’s already inspiring me to see afresh my business moving forward.
The other day in my Secret Mastermind group with Serena Hicks, I was celebrating how I will finally have an office, but also celebrating that I created my business, published my book, applied for conferences and residencies, wrote and published new essays and continued this newsletter (albeit sometimes haphazardly) all without a special designated work area that was only my own is in itself a celebration. Yes, we all want a room of our own à la Virginia Woolf but if we wait for the right conditions, we’ll never get to work. It will never be the right time. Which of course reminds me of the wonderful quote from Doris Lessing, “Whatever you’re meant to do, do it now. The conditions are always impossible.”
And maybe having impossible conditions are what make it possible. But it’s so easy to have those slippery thoughts like, I’ll just wait till XYZ happens and then I’ll be settled to begin or I don’t really need to do this, or I don’t really need the money, a sneaky way our lazy brains convince us not to do what we really want to do and to keep kicking our dreams down the lane. If I had waited till I had an office space back in 2019 to start, I would’ve been waiting a very long time.
Which is to say, that it’s been a lot of “make it work” moments, if you’re familiar with Tim Gunn’s equally important catchphrase from Project Runway. Sometimes we do our best work when we have constraints, when we only have that twenty minutes to write, when we do not have all the money in the world to start our project, when we have to just figure it out and make it work.
All of this is easier said than done, as I have put things on the back burner because I did have to recognize that I couldn’t do everything. My new book The Philogynists has taken a back seat, I’ve had to pause indefinitely my Sunday generative writing sessions and this newsletter has fallen by the wayside these last few months. Not totally sure I made all the right choices but they were the right choices at the time.
It’s a fine line between capacity and constraint. How do we tell the difference? Or rather what it really is, is learning to distinguish what is a priority at the moment, what you have the mental bandwith to take on, what you have to take on, and what might have to wait, but with the caveat of not waiting too long. Ideas are fleeting and if we don’t catch them, they do move on to someone else.
As a people pleaser, I’ve had to learn that saying yes is always saying no to something else. As a coach, I’ve had to learn how to hold the space when we try to talk ourselves out of doing the thing we most want to do. I remember taking a class with talented writer and teacher, Chloe Caldwell and she said that her whole career was because of cold emails, and that she was really good at not talking herself out of hitting send. I love that. And it’s true, you never know what doors will open just by reaching out to someone.
So I’m hitting send on this letter.
This past month, I’ve had three friends reach out to me, to “pick my brain” about what to do for manuscripts/essays they’ve written, where to go next. What’s been very lovely is they’ve offered to pay for my time, and so far two of them have signed on as one-on-one clients. This is a really great thing, as I’m so passionate about people writing their books and figuring out how to have them published and out in the world. So I’d be remiss to not offer that in this letter too since it’s all about when we take the plunge, when we say no to waiting any longer, when we recognize that it doesn’t have to be perfect to start.
If that’s you and you want to figure out what’s next, book a strategic magic meeting here. Don’t talk yourself out of it! ;-)
Wishing us all a lovely summer and the ability to be honest with ourselves of when we really need to wait and take a break or when our brains are being tricky and just postponing the thing that we really want that will actually give us pleasure because we’re a bit afraid. What a gift it is to know ourselves and know the difference. Love that for us!
xox,
Augustine
In my happy place at this year’s Writers Retreat! Photo by Anne-Juliette at Cramee Studio. You can bet that more pictures are coming soon!