Pull up a chair, bestie

I’ve got something a little more personal to share with you today

Things that ✨sparked joy✨ for me this week

• 23 lovely people subscribe to this newsletter 🥳

• Met up with Ray Clark (@iNotionWorkflow on Twitter) to connect and ended up starting working on a Notion template collab 👀

• The one reel I thought sucked actually got 500+ views??

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A lot of stuff has been going on personally and it’s been feeling like… the word that comes to mind is renaissance but it’s not really that. Renaissance is a revival, a renewal, a reawakening. What I’m going through feels more like

There’s pain, loss, grief, fear. An unbecoming, a demolishing, clearing of the old shit.

This journey through entrepreneurship is so eye-opening, mind-blowing, it’s cracking me wide open. I know I said personally before but as someone building a personal brand, entrepreneurship = personal

There’s so much of you that you have to find and identify so that you can share with the world. If you don’t know who you are, how can you share yourself? You end up sharing a version of yourself that you think people want to see. Or maybe a version of someone that may not even be you because that’s what you think people want to see.

That’s how I started this journey; sharing a version of myself that I thought others would prefer seeing. As expected, it’s been hit or miss and I definitely felt like I was being inauthentic. Which, if you know me you know I hate. And being a hypocrite? Lord have mercy…

But I was afraid of sharing who I was. And in a way I didn’t really know who I was? I’d been playing the game of being what others needed me to be. The rock steady friend, the caring daughter, the reliable employee.

Now don’t get me wrong those are me, but I went all in all the time being those parts of me that I never got to explore the other parts of me. Those parts of me that I thought people didn’t want to see. I was afraid of being rejected, unloved, deprioritized, if I showed those parts of me because that wasn’t want others valued in me.

Of course that translated into my work. I hid behind a business name, a title I thought would get the girls going. I quite literally hid my face — I didn’t want anyone to know it was me doing something so outside of my character (spoiler: it was not). I barely even spoke about my work outside of those online spaces and if I did I was just promoting some shit I didn’t really believe in.

It’ll be 2 years since I started this journey and… shit is kinda fucked bestie. Not gonna lie. In trying to find myself (which really less of a finding and more of a rediscovering), I’ve rocked the boat. I’ve shaken the table.

A lot of the folks who’ve valued me — the masked me — are so confused right now. Cos like what the fuck am I doing? This is so ‘out of character’ for me. Something has to be wrong.

And I lowkey (highkey) feel a bit crazy. I feel like I’m prime candidate for a grippy sock vacation chile. I’m so scared. I’m second-guessing myself, doubting that what I’m doing is the right thing. The kind of ruckus I’m creating in finding and being my true self is so uncomfortable.

And it feels so good.

Inside all of that fear and discomfort (or maybe despite it), there’s an excitement. There’s freedom. I feel limitless. This sounds really woowoo but hear me out: I feel BIG. EXPANSIVE. Like the ocean, or space.

I feel like there are so many more possibilities available to me. But only if I keep being myself. I only feel small and limited if I remain who other people want me to be.

If I become someone I’m not, I feel stuck and boxed in. If I become more myself, I feel limitless.

I still feel fear about what people would think of me. Those people are mostly my family. They don’t understand why I’ve chosen this path. It’s risky, there’s uncertainty, it’s just plain weird to them.

They’re the generation of working office jobs at big companies — my mother, her brother, and sister worked at the same job for at least 25 years. Running a business doesn’t make sense to them.

I should follow in their footsteps: do a thing at a company for the next quarter century, have safety and security then retire having been the perfect employee.

They have their own fears about what I’m doing and want me to be safe but they don’t understand that this path is safer for me.

I’m not even sure where I’m going with this, bestie. I guess I want you to know that it’s okay to be afraid and still do the scary thing. Be afraid of demolishing the old, the thing that doesn’t serve, and do it anyway to make room for the thing that sparks joy for you. Be afraid to follow the sparkle and do it anyway so that you can share that joy with the world.

You deserve to live the life you want. Be afraid to shake the table and shake it anyway.