volume ninety-seven
a million deaths and rebirths
🪩🪩🪩 Hey pals, if you haven’t already, this is your reminder to vote for the topic that will be my 100th volume (can you believe?) – you can do so here!
On Sunday I purged another journal. This one had scrawled on the front: Life Coaching & Manifesting & Working Through It.
It started off with a list of things I never want to be that was written maybe in late 2018 or early 2019. The first on the list was “Stay in a role/situation/relationship (romantic or otherwise) that makes me unhappy”. This is what I just did. I just told my wonderful, lovely boss who runs a lovely, wonderful business that the new proposed contract was not for me. Slowly over the course of 1.5 years, the role had shifted significantly from the one that first got me excited. Feeling immense gratitude for them wanting me to remain part of the team, I lost sight of what I wanted. Last week, signs popped up, and tummy feelings started to arrive, and I realised that somehow I had veered way off my path and was right back to a familiar place: the one where I had lost my vision for myself, and my creative energy, and had committed to way too many hours at my desk helping someone else fulfil their dreams instead of fulfilling my own.
The rest of the list of things I never wanted to do/be mentioned things like forgetting where I came from, losing touch with loved ones, forgetting who helped me or forgetting to help others, selling out for personal gain, taking myself too seriously, being someone who complains too much, forgetting to be grateful… Then it said again (and I am genuinely not sure if this was intentional repetition): forget who has helped me.
To those friends who helped me craft the email, find the courage, shed guilt, reignite my creativity and assure me I was making the right decision last week, thank you 🧡
The next page was filled with questions I brought to a meeting with an unofficial mentor, one of the first times I was ready to leave a job I had invested a lot into and made a huge part of my life so slowly that I didn’t realise I had lost myself in it. Then I listed my strengths in that field, companies to look into for potential new roles… basically ways I was talking myself into staying in that industry.
Then there were a whole lot of pages consisting of the dreams I wished to fulfil for myself and at the job that indeed came next, indeed in that same industry. There were many pages crossed out, folded when complete, career accomplishment after accomplishment. There were a lot of scribbles that changed the goals set. “Week” became “month”. “All” became “some”. “Daily” became “weekly”. Here was written proof that I have always been clear on what I want, and at the same time written proof that I have always been able to shift that easily without question for others. The worst one? The one that said, “Take a week 3 days off between ending one job and starting the next”.
In an effort to learn more about my higher self and the things that called me, if only I would listen, next came pages of notes from taking a course I have no memory of taking. The first line read: “What you believe is your reality”. These were followed by a page of things to have done by the end of 2020. This was a List Of Things To Do For Me which, minus one or two, is exactly the same as a list I wrote just a few days ago. How many more years am I going to put off things like this, that are for me?
I didn’t linger on caring for myself too long because the next page was titled Not Everything Is About You and berated myself for being a bad listener, bad at being happy for others, and having a constant need to prove myself… all things that were true.
Next: a list of 17 books I read in a year when I decided to read 30 pages before allowing myself on social media. It turned into 20 pages in May. The list ended with one book in September.
Do I need to tell you that too many of these pages included goals of months or weeks or weekends or Mondays off booze?
In this book, I listed all the places I want to spend more time in or visit for the first time. My list is still the same. The pages told me staying in Vancouver is too expensive and makes these dreams impossible.
There were notes and scripts from my stint in acting classes.
There were notes from interviews from one job to the next, boosting my career in the same industry yet again and forgetting all the pages between longing for more.
Mentions of having a space to dance, sing, play my music at the volume I want to, cook without navigating the space for others too, and make every day feel like Sunday showed up again and again.
There were many comedians mentioned that I admire that I met during this period, through my work in the industry. I had no idea that at the time, I was crushing my own dreams of comedy. Just a few pages later, there was a quote I took when I was at Margaret Cho Q&A: “Comedians do comedy because they don’t have a choice. That’s the way they communicate with the world. It’s not for money, fame etc…”. Rumblings.
On little Lauren’s 29th birthday, there were some wise words: “You can change your life at any moment you want to. Do not be scared — it’s always going to be for the better.”
There were rules I created myself for sleep purely because I sucked at it.
There was a list of goals I went into my first life-coaching session with. Once I took the next job, moved across the country, lent into my career, forgot all the pages with creative dreams and forgot me. The thing that stood out: I want to be creative. It was said in many ways, but not directly.
My life coach and I brought a spiritual practice into my life, a morning routine that continues to nourish me and evolve, and there are book recommendations, prayers, affirmations, readings, and meditation tips on page after page of sessions. Most weeks I wrote that I wanted to talk about my creative goals (among other things) and the other things were the only ones checked off.
Finally, eventually, in the last 2 minutes of a session, I blurted out a podcast idea I had. Dare I speak of my creative ambitions when my job for almost a decade has been to help others reach theirs? I will never forget how it made me feel when she praised this idea and geared our future sessions toward making it a reality.
There were whispers of my introduction and curiosities to recovery.
We navigated my demisexuality and how I went from shame to acceptance to power.
There were notes from things that we spoke about “What I did as a kid and enjoyed is my true and authentic nature.” Then I wrote “Art is the perfect revenge” and I don’t know if they were her words or mine.
I should note that at this stage, I opened to a page that held crumbs of some sort. Corn chips perhaps? After the corn chips, I started writing about having writing goals for the first time.
There were more sobriety goals, and none of them said “for a week” or “for a month”. They were plans without an end.
There was a list of places my podcast could be featured. iHeart was one of them and just this week I was chosen as one of their featured podcasts for Pride Month.
There was written proof of when I heard the Liz Gilbert quote for the first time, which now lives in a frame by my bed and on my favourite mug: “What are you willing to give up in order to have the life you keep pretending to want?”
Then a reminder from my life coach session, advice she gave me in my early sobriety days: “Life is such chaos when drinking that calm feels weird. I deserve a life that is easy. I deserve calm.” I needed this reminder now as much as then.
In May 2021 our notes tell me I decided to quit my job. (I would not have my last day until December). There was a handwritten speech that I planned to give my boss that my life coach helped me write. As mentioned, this past week friends helped me craft an email to the contract I had decided to step away from.
Then, sober, ready to quit my career and pursue writing and creative goals, the pages had nothing. The notebook ended. Blank.
The notes I took years ago are as helpful today as they were then. The work we did together then laid the bricks to help me to continue to build the life I live today.
In 2019, I was in a similar cycle as I am in 2023, just like this page I read the day I decided to step down:
Lovely reader, an earlier photo in this volume prompts: I am better at ______ than I was a year ago. What is that for you?
I’m so grateful to those who read my substack 🧡 because I really love creating it for you. This substack will always be free, so in order to support my work in other ways, you can:
🧡 forward it to one friend! word of mouth is the greatest gift to creators.
🧡 listen to my podcast!
🧡 leave a comment on this volume with your thoughts!
🧡 jump over to the hi, lauren deborah! chat and get in on silly conversations discussing things like this:
here are three things I struggled with this week:
🫠 Every time I think I say something funny and as soon as I do I realise that person isn’t the audience for my humour.
💭 Daydreaming. But also I like it so…
😮💨 The way (most, enough, too many) doctors treat women.
here are three blessings from this week:
🦋 Another old journal tells me Poppy once said: “I have some advice for you for getting through your work. Take a deep breath in,” and he took a deep breath. “Close your eyes and then say STUFF IT!”
🥫 I am so good at being smart with grocery money and I am savvy having just forfeited a chunk of my monthly income. It’s never been “This is my favourite soap/pasta/juice/peanut butter…” ever since I was a child. It has always been about what is on special, and that has never changed.
✨ On Friday I went to a friend’s book launch and there was folk music and poetry and fairy lights and all the feels that I did the right thing. It’s okay to feel sad and excited after making the right decision.
here are three goals for the coming week:
🫀 Keep my finger on the pulse.
🫀 Keep my finger on the pulse.
🫀 Keep my finger on the pulse.
pics or it didn’t happen:
I love you. Now I am off to do a Google search to see what ice creameries in Vancouver have summer job openings. Imagine the people I could chat with! Have you ever seen anyone unhappy buying an ice cream?
LD
xoxo
Thank you for sharing so much of your journey. I'm so happy for you that you're learning to fulfill yourself, not just other people.
I can't do just one. Can I ever? Here's a handful!
I am better at being kind to myself than I was a year ago.
I am better at putting my creative dreams first, than I was a year ago.
I am better at being a partner to Cuddles, than I was a year ago.
I am better at accepting the things I can no longer do, than I was a year ago.
I am better at accepting love, than I was a year ago.
I just adore you and your writing. I needed to read this today. Thank you so much.