Back when I first started down the entrepreneurship route, I didn’t even know “entrepreneurship” was what I was doing. I just knew the career paths in front of me weren’t working, and from my limited vantage point, I wasn’t sure any alternatives would either (at least not for the long haul).
Trying to figure out how to make a living without burning through every ounce of energy I had wasn’t the fast route to an income, but the route I could steadily continue down.
By this point, I decided that holding down a job with the ebb and flow of my ability was a losing game, so I set my sights on pursuing something different.
Fumbling through what making a job for myself might look like, I was cobbling together bits and pieces, which worked out pretty well. I credit being unable to focus on the lecturer at the front of the room during my university classes with a lot of my success ;) It’s amazing how much you can write and wordsmith from the back of the classroom while looking like you’re taking notes.
Inevitably, my undiagnosed autoimmune disorders became debilitating to the point that attending classes every day wasn’t feasible between chronic pain and fatigue. One of my coping mechanisms was hyper-focusing on creating an escape route from the bleak options that awaited me out in the “real world” of employment if I managed to complete my degree. Thanks to academic accommodations and understanding supervisors and professors, I eventually completed my degree. And that coping mechanism? Well, as unhealthy as it likely was, it had created a platform to build upon.
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I had not yet fully grasping how a cluster of cognitive differences was playing out in my life (which I’m still unpacking), but by some stroke of luck managed to I built my first business during a recession, while still in university, and navigating the frustrating road of getting diagnosed with multiple autoimmune disorders.
So why is any of this relevant for the about page of this website? What you'll find within this website isn’t just what I needed back when I started, but also what I needed much later, after stepping away from a business I built with my whole heart and finding myself in a strange, still season. One where nothing external was coming together.
Can you relate? Creativity was increasingly hard to access when it wasn’t pushed up the hill by desperation or a hyper-focus-coping-mechanism (hello, escapism, my old friend!)
No, I didn’t have those this time. I was just bloody tired. I felt completely depleted and unsure of what my next move was. My identity had been wrapped up in a business that I had been ready to let go of for years, and now that I did, and there was just space and possibilities. While I had a lot of caring responsibilities each day, I had no idea what I wanted the next phase of my career to look like since retiring completely wasn’t (yet) an option. I was stalled in place, unsure of what direction to start facing, let alone moving towards.
During this time, I was writing updates for the animal sanctuary I co-founded, and I would occasionally find myself wandering into the kitchen to bake something (just to make something with my hands, from scratch, like I had done almost daily for a decade and a half before selling my previous business).
I drifted like this for a long, long while.
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Worry, anxiety, and attempting to fight with a brain that didn’t want to BRAIN the way I wanted it to, had me feeling uncomfortable, in a way I didn’t expect or prepare for. I attempted to remedy this feeling with fits and starts of creative pursuits. I did a little bit of freelance work here and there, too.
Intuitively, I knew I needed time and space to just do nothing. To get bored again. To learn, explore, and fuel my mind, body, and spirit again.
But I just couldn’t get myself to do that - even though I knew I needed (and wanted) to do just that.. Busywork felt more comfortable than standing still (at least that’s what anxiety told me).
Finally unable to busy myself through another day, week, or month, I was focused to do nothing, and no responsibilities other than sleeping, eating, and catching up with strong women in my life (thank you to my mom, sister, and niece for making it the best “focused chill and relax” ever).
I came back from being plucked out of my daily routine, which was high in responsibility but low in creativity, to a shift in me. If I had to name it, I would say I had capacity again, and some pretty clear boundaries I would start implementing.
I started asking what my nervous system needed each week, day, and sometimes, hour. I entered into a phase of wandering, recalibrating, and slowly learning what it meant to once again craft a living around what fit with my skills, but also my nervous system.
A Season of Stories grew out of that.
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While I had already picked the name a year before, I didn’t know what exactly a season of stories would look like, be like, or even do.
After several months of doing my best to be mindful of my stress levels and coming back into my body, clarity came to me in a 12-minute mindmap I wrote in a complete flow state. I’m notorious for dissociating from my body - I often act like I’m just a brain in a jar despite having physical demands and responsibilities at the sanctuary each morning and night.
Surprisingly to no one ;), focusing on supporting my nervous system and staying present in my body paid off - not just in the capacity, direction, and desire to move forward, BUT this time, my true north it wasn’t wrapped up in (complete) escapism, distraction, or fueled by impending doom that I attempted to out run through work.
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