Oh, how things are crazy right now. I’m in the deepest hell of the launch, when everything is upside-down and nothing is moving fast enough and we don’t have systems and processes and I haven’t hired all my hires and my boss is wondering if I know what I’m doing and I’m not sleeping through the night and I have to just keep saying to myself over and over and over: “You’re in it for the long game. You’re in it for the long game.”
Just keep going. Just keep going. Just keep going.
This, apparently, is my life skill. To just keep going. To be the ox with the world strapped on her back, completely oblivious to what it is costing her to keep going. All I see is the goal, the vision, the reward.
I’m doing pretty well, have created different coping devices than wine and crackers to get through the stress. I still need more and better habits, but I don’t feel the self-loathing loading onto me as I have in launches past. I think: “I’m doing the best I can.” “It won’t be like this forever.” “You have to take care of yourself. You’re older now.”
And so I go to bed early, make plans with different people I am casually dating on the nights I take for myself after working late, bring real food into work on Mondays to supply a week’s worth of healthy lunches. And it helps. All these things help. I’m not drowning.
But it’s hard. Twenty hours of commuting a week is hard. Not having any time to go running is hard. Missing my meditation practice (oh the irony) is hard.
But today, a friend I’ve known since what seems like the beginning of time posts this on Facebook, after he asked what I was up to right now:
I am so proud of you, and all of the beauty you have brought to life through your work.
What? Did someone really just say that to me? And mean it?
Wow. Someone did. (Thank you, Steven. You have always been the biggest heart in the room since we were all 8 years old.)
And I’m going to take it at face value and be so fucking grateful that this is how some people see the madness I put myself (and my family) through. With my work, I want to reach us all, all of us (including and especially me), and say:
You are just fine. You are. Listen closely to the small voice in your head, the one you sometimes ignore. That voice is the one that tells you the truth about who you are. Listen. Listen, closely. And know that that is your intuition leading you to where you are supposed to be.
It’s hard right now, where I am. But I’m hoping it’s where I’m supposed to be.