Letting go is hard. Recently I've been feeling like my routine is failing me. The things that once worked are clearly no longer working. I've spent far too long diagnosing why rather than just accepting that shit changes and adapting. I've been dragging, because I am being dragged by my own former commitments. And the cycle of trying to pinpoint exactly what's wrong is its own trap. It never ends.
Take joining a coworking space. When I started my business, living alone and working alone was draining in a way remote work had never been before. For the first time while working remotely, I was also living alone and not traveling for work. Everything was isolated and at home. If I wanted to see someone, meet anyone new, I had to do all the lifting. Now remote work became effortful in a way it had never been.
But it also felt like a failure to admit to needing an office. I'd been a remote work advocate for a decade. That identity, and the story I was telling myself to protect it, wasn't helping me. So I went to an office anyway. The social environment was long overdue. Good for my life, good for business. It spotlighted how isolated things had become. How lonely. I had been so stuck in an old identity and routine that I was blind to what I actually needed.
That's the drag. The more I tried to understand why it wasn't working, the harder I got pulled under. I don't need to completely understand what's not working. I just need to accept that it isn't, and start experimenting.
The questions didn't help. The traditional ones: what do I need to let go of? What am I running from? What's one tiny action? They kept me in my head. More thought exercises. More analysis. I find this to be especially true for deeply entrenched lifestyle and identity habits. The only answer to overthinking is action. That's it.
me overthinking
Action absorbs anxiety. I'm not saying drop everything and drive to Mexico. I'm saying when shit ain't working, pick one new thing to try. Diagnostics have no deadline. You can keep thinking. But a new action opens up energy and insight that analysis never will. Doing something novel is almost always more valuable than analyzing from a distance.
Let it die ☠️
Sometimes quitting is the best option. We all have that one thing we excuse, throw good money after bad, romanticize the potential of. The thing we will not put down. I wrote this in my journal a year ago and needed the reminder: not making a choice is a choice.
There's a Feist song called Let It Die. One lyric gets me every time: "Now I know what I don't want." You've been in it long enough to know. You always know.
Stay unscripted my loves.
🖤 - EmmyLu