Pushing through.

Doing it differently this time even though I'm scared.

Portrait of me by my mother, Bonnie Lynn Felton, find her work at lynnfelton.com

Recently, I’ve been met with a familiar feeling of frustration. I’m bored with where I am in my “career”, disappointed with my finances, confused with where I am “going” and what I am qualified to do. I feel deeply unsatisfied creatively and I am craving more responsibility in my work life. I have been in this exact spot A LOT. Having spent most of my 20s and early 30s in, first New York City and then Los Angeles, pursuing a career as an actress and then as a writer, I became a very, very good server. In an attempt to find community and learn Atlanta better, I have now been at a restaurant in this city for two years. It’s a job I wrote about finding a new appreciation for here, how I no longer feel catatonic about “having to wait tables” while I wait for my dreams to come true. At least now I take responsibility for myself and my choices and also see the privilege of having a job at all. And it’s a great job at a great restaurant that has truly handed me my whole life on a serving tray (see: boyfriend (who I waited on there 2 years ago now), incredible friends who I love (that always happens at restaurants) and an apartment that is perfect and right in the middle of a neighborhood that looks like an episode of Gilmore Girls (I never watched that show but you get the point.) “I am very grateful,” sounds like a sound bite at this point because my gratitude is clouded with a bratty, “but I don’t wannaaaa” attitude. It’s childish and spoiled and embarrassing and makes it impossible to actually feel the joyful fullness, the honest excitement for being alive, real true gratitude.

There are a few patterns at play that I have cycled through enough times now to be able to see clearly. The first is the initial excitement phase. This is where I get SO AMPED about a new idea or endeavor, I pore over it for a few weeks, two months at most and then something happens, I take a trip, I miss a day, I get busy with other things or a new idea/endeavor comes along and slowly but surely that thing I was obsessed with starts collecting dust on a shelf. I’ll look at it from time to time with a wistful nostalgia and wish I could pick it back up or get back into it, “why don’t you just DO IT?”, I tell myself and then continue scrolling through short cleaning montages on YouTube. This is when the second phase of the pattern begins, the punishment. The spiraling, bottomless thoughts, “I want to be my own boss, I want to share my gift, but how?” There is also, “I want to do something else but what am I even qualified for?” And the classic, “I’ll get back to it when…” and then involving myself in everything else BUT the thing that I actually would love to be doing. Tricking myself into thinking I’m busy and then finding myself bored, desperate and frustrated again...but at least with a fully organized home. That then leads into the third and perhaps most powerful phase of the pattern, the coddling. I feel desperate and bad and sad and frustrated and depressed. What would help? Taking my idea from the shelf, dusting it off and losing hours doing what I truly love, wondering why I always wait so long to come back and how avoiding it serves me at all. But what do I do instead? I take a bath. I read my tarot cards. I listen to a podcast. Read a self-help book. Consider spending money for a career counselor. All lovely activities that are placating and get me nowhere except back to the beginning of the cycle. The loop that starts with a deep breath and a “you’re okay, you’ve got this” and ends with a “if I have to wait on one more table I am going to pull out all my hair and log roll myself out the front door of this restaurant and into the middle of the street.” I like to pretend like I don’t know what I actually want to do with my life. Like I don’t know what I’m qualified for. I say I want to be my own boss but that I don’t know the first step I should take to make that a reality. I feel like I need to dig deeper, have the entire big picture mapped out and clear before I commit to moving forward. In reality, I know what I love, what I’m good at and where I thrive, now is the time to consistently take the steps to be there.

As I have made abundantly clear, I turn 40 in October and ages that end with a -0 or a -5 reallllllly get me thinking. I love a milestone and the start of a new decade is beyond exciting to me. It feels like these last few months of my 30s are a chance to pack my bags and get ready for the flight into my next chapter. What do I want to bring? How do I want to pack? What do I want the next ten, twenty years to look like? Knowing that I have no one else to blame but myself for staying in my comfort zone, I’m committing to something new. Honestly, I’m a new person now and the soft parenting from the past doesn’t feel good anymore.

Time moves more quickly with each passing year. I’ve always been enamored with stories of people who’ve set long term goals and achieved them. To look back on the time it took and reflect on how it both flew and dragged by, I am longing for that reflection. Recently, my friend Zarinah, who now has a huge following on TikTok and also started a Substack a few months back and has consistently posted THREE times a week for the past 18+ weeks, wrote about how she is taking an end of Summer break (cutting back to TWO posts a week lol) and setting some new goals for herself. Reflecting. I kept thinking how nice it must be to work so hard that you healthfully decide it’s time to regather yourself, I was so inspired. You must subscribe to The Weekly Work. Zarinah’s commentary on literally anything cuts so concisely to the core of an issue, with humor and wit and deep intellect, I’m always left thinking “oh my god, I could NEVER have figured out how to articulate what I’m feeling about that, she’s the smartest person I know”. I wait for her newsletters to hit my inbox and stop whatever I’m doing to read them immediately. Total fan-girl.

I’ve had a blog since 2006. How about that? 17 years. I have never, in all those years, been consistent. I have in all those years, tumbled through the same inspiration to frustration to placation cycle and now I’m ready for a new pattern. As I prepare to enter a new decade, gratefully with so many things I realize I wanted for so many years and now have, I am committing to seeing what happens if I post here weekly and follow through with the monthly podcast I planned at the beginning of this year. I feel sheepish and embarrassed declaring this in writing. Many of you have read my blogs over the years and will remember similar declarations in the past followed by months and years without another post. I’m not doing that this time. Oof. Scary stuff to say out in public. I’ve been listening to a mediocre self-help book called, The Big Leap. It’s truly just fine BUT I do really resonate with his main theory of the Zone of Excellence vs. the Zone of Genius. Your Zone of Excellence is what you’re good at doing, what you don’t have to try too hard at, people can depend on you to accomplish what you’re intended to and you are comfortable. This is waiting tables for me. Your Zone of Genius is that space where you truly soar. You are doing what you are uniquely good at and deeply love and enjoy, it can be your work but it is abundant because you lose yourself when you’re engaging in it. Bashfully, that for me is sharing my writing and creativity with you. I get a deep satisfaction from putting my words onto the internet and I am very enthusiastic (and skeptical), mostly excited to see how it feels to be here weekly for at least the next year. Many new dreams and aspirations have begun to percolate in my older and wiser mind and I have a newfound patience for enjoying the journey it takes to achieve them. Being here with commitment, even though I feel nervous, feels right. I’m ready to push through with some tougher self-love into a new and abundant chapter of life and I am, as always, so incredibly grateful to you for being here.

Enjoy the rest of this August. Mercury goes retrograde on Thursday but September is just around the corner.

I am sending you my love.