Being a hun, being free
For the last three weeks I’ve started Mondays by going on Zoom before 8am. I turn my camera on but leave my microphone on mute. I let people into the call and then for 20 minutes I just write in my notebook and the other people in the call write in theirs, and then I wave and some people catch the wave and some people don’t, and I close the Zoom and slam my laptop shut and wander back into the bedroom. It’s nice. It isn’t life changing or energetic or moving or exciting, it’s just nice. It’s just very low key nice. Anyway I’m going to keep it up because even though my sleepiness at this time of year mean I have to wrench myself from bed, I do like something about 8.05am and sitting on the bed having written three pages in almost-company.
I realised yesterday that writing by hand is where I do my thinking and writing on my keyboard is where I do my writing. And the routine of it has had a useful impact in my life. It’s harder when I find myself un-tortured or unbothered by life. I have to dig around and write pointless things down, the dregs of my dreams, things I can see out the window, that sort of thing. And it’s useful when I have balled up threads of tangled wool that I want to make sense of. A lot of the time I’m just pepping myself up and telling myself that I’m doing ok, explaining myself outloud to myself. It’s quite charming. I always think that about diary entries, like half the time we’re just explaining ourselves to the invisible reader.
This month has come with a certain sense of relief. For as long as Instagram has existed, I’ve been trying to sell yoga on there. When I first started my marketing career, I decided to stay clear of showing my hot-bod and flashy shapes and used pictures of cats instead. Needless to say it wasn’t the most effective marketing tool and we have to ask what I was thinking? But godbless I can recognise an urge to be different that still plagues and rules me. The urge saves me sometimes, like how an immersion into the yoga world and exposure to vegan or extreme styles of eating ‘healthily’ sent me into a heady rebellion of pastries and beef mince and pasta three nights a week. So, contrary sometimes saves me and in a moment where I could have gone either way into my preoccupation with health, I literally unlearnt the calorie count of eggs.
Anyway, the cat era came to an abrupt end when I became single. It was an opportunity to show my hot-bod and face online to ‘sell’ yoga, but really just to try to get the attention of that boy. Ah it was a special time. I’d share playlists with cryptic titles about my emotions because I am who I am, followed by melancholy mirror selfies and sunrises. Look I was a girl about town who felt too much, what of it. The pandemic a dream amalgamation of marketing my genuine business and showing myself off. The separation between myself and my business was impossible. And I realised I’ve always been an everything is everything person, so there was actually nothing to separate. And I don’t even necessarily think it’s a problem, just an observation.
I didn’t play the obvious game of being a yogi of Instagram, but I did play my own games instead. I always wanted to be honest and tell the truth and it comes easily, and it’s also contrived because of the flawed nature of being a human being. Trying to sell a retreat was entangled in trying to persuade someone to love me, it’s just how it is if you’re the only person behind your business and that is your public outlet. And there’s been professional and energetic peaks and troughs because sustaining that kind of energy is impossible. I’m sure there were months when I abandoned the professional dimensions of my account and posted only poems, nights out and my unmade bed (it’s a rite of passage ok). And it is! All of it. You can map the exact stage of someone’s breakup or personal psyche from their Instagram activity. And still, I’m here for it. I sometimes miss people, when their personal lives settle down and they don’t share in the same way. It’s like, where did you put your teenage angst though?
I miss my own sometimes. The days I’d feel so much I could burst with the lyrics of that female singer-song writer. Burst I tell you.
I’ve had periods of motivation and focus with how to use it as a more business savvy marketing tool. And sometimes it works and sometimes I feel like my mouth is full of sand and I’m dead behind the eyes. And perhaps the key to all this is that I’m not a very consistent person. Tabby always says I’m a river person. And I like that because I’m a romantic and it makes me feel like an unattainable free spirit who rides freely and goes with the currents of life. Even though I do love staying in and cannot help with sensible bedtimes and ‘getting back’. Must get back.
I always laugh when people see a healer or therapist type and come out declaring that they love freedom but also crave stability. Because I think, yes everyone, hello yes the human condition. Like Holly laughed at me when I ranted about how much I hate to be misunderstood. See above hun.
But where was I? I do hate commitment and I don’t want to have a plan in my diary for May. It’s an unbearable and impossible feeling so I’d rather you put it in your diary and wait till the week before to tell me. But this is the same for making a business plan or trying to execute a strategy. Something that worked for me a month ago might have moved on by now. So must we force it?
This month has come with a rush of relief that I am not trying to sell something that wasn’t working for me anymore. That I don’t have to package myself up as sweet and wholesome and able to give you what you need on any given day. It’s come with relief and wide open space.