I have decided on a new concept for this blog so many times, and each time I feel frustrated with myself. Why didn’t I get it right the first time? Every change in direction also knocks some confidence in the next decision. This has been a pattern over the past year, but I feel like I’ve had a perspective shift - it’s just coming to form. I am realizing that in order for this to grow authentically, I need to allow the iteration. That’s really uncomfortable. I’ve been looking for stability and control in what is supposed to be a creative process. But that’s likely because I have lost it in many other places. From my career to even my journey with horseback riding. In a way, it feels like my final grasp, likely not, but I naively can’t think of any area of my life that’s left.

On Monday I started taking voice memos while I was driving. I drive quite a bit, and some of the time is spent filming. I’m actively avoiding filming more than I can edit, so I needed another way to spend those drives, or else I’d start to spiral about how much time I was losing. Also, I wanted something more personal to reflect on; while the videos are personal, there are certain things I like to keep private! However, there are some important lessons that I think can be re-packaged and explored. I had an LLM summarize the themes throughout the week. I was planning on doing it myself, but the transcripts were 19 pages of rambling. And I told myself that I would get the writing done Sunday night after recording the voice memos all week; it’s 9:43 pm, the writing would have never happened if I actually read through those pages. I’d likely have the too familiar experience of falling asleep in front of my laptop. Except normally it’s my work computer.

“You frequently move between feeling powerful and feeling barely resourced enough to hold your life together.”

It’s becoming clear that it is part of the challenge of changing identities: a conflict between the two that can lead me to frustration at times. In writing this, I’m realizing there are still so many areas where I’m looking for external validation, but I was blind to them. I would wonder why I still have struggles, why things aren’t moving, why I need to keep re-enforcing boundaries, why I’m so tired. And I think the answer really lies in me still searching for that confirmation that “it’s working.” I feel like I’m just waiting for that next step in life. And I’ve repeated a very similar pattern before, including the leap in order to try to force from the universe. This time I was trying to force answers instead of an outcome. I have no idea what is going to happen in my next chapter of life. I don’t know how long I’ll be living with my parents for, where my boyfriend and I will end up moving to, how my finances will hold up once I need to pay rent again, what the future looks like at my job. There are so many answers I’ve been looking for, but an underlying theme is I needed the validation that I was spiritually connected.

Hence the identity mismatch, both coming from places of strong emotion as well. Which makes it even more tricky. Lots of intensity and power behind it all.

We were sitting in the golf cart at the horse show. I think it was at one of the schooling rings towards the back. Palm trees in the background with construction beyond that. The horse show was rapidly expanding. That area is actually now more competition rings.
“You and him are the same,” Declan told me. “You go from the highest highs to the lowest lows. Each time, you think it was the best or the worst round. Just aim to be consistent and in the middle.”

He was a person who I thought always told me the truth, and I really respected that. Regarding that comment, he was completely right. Each time I went into the show ring, I wanted to be perfect. It’s not like it was my goal; it was the standard I held myself to in such an unforgiving way. Before I was comfortable competing and jumping at certain heights, I expected myself to be perfect. I felt like that truth made a huge difference in my riding; it recalibrated me to be consistent. It required me to have belief in myself and not worry about what other people thought, which was part of the foundation of my perfectionism. Once I made that choice, I leveled up skill-wise. I don’t think it was the only factor, but it did make me shift my goal and how I viewed my horses’ programs.

Riding went from something I did for fun and tried to be good at to something I actively trained for. I had a plan for each ride and stuck with it, then iterated on each day. For the first time, I didn’t rely on luck for a good round - it was reps. My goal was to push myself a bit more every day, and be the best I was capable of in the moment.

One thing has been revealed to me recently: it’s time to apply that concept to other areas of my life as well. I definitely get caught up in chasing the high a bit, thinking about all the possible futures and wanting to get there. When I have those intense emotions, it feels like it’s moving faster. This really applies to the highs in my career; I always want more. But I think I need to be aiming for steady. When curious about some of the frustration I’ve been feeling, part of it is driven by the desire for things to feel stable. Yet I think I was the one causing the instability. And that’s disappointing, yet also empowering, because it means that I can change.

Going back to identity shifting, there’s another layer to this. There’s an intensity that I chase. And it’s for a very similar reason: I want to feel that progress towards a huge goal, so I rush towards it. I guess it gets amplified here because identity is one thing I should be able to control. Yet I always find myself frustrated with my lack of ability to do so. While it seems easy in concept to change behavior, it’s something I struggle with quite a bit. It’s like I keep turning up the dial hoping it will accelerate eventually, when the real thing to do is let things shift at their own rate. I feel like this is a place where going slow is incredibly beneficial. And I think going into next week, it’ll be useful to focus on picking up some small habits that will contribute to that shift.

That means I also need to get clear on what that identity is, which is really tricky. My visions change all the time, and maybe that’s because I just chase everything with the most intensity. I have noticed that as my big goal keeps changing, totally driven by circumstances, there’s always an active decision on my part to release the old one. It feels like killing a part of yourself off. Each time this happens, I lose some self-trust. Not only does it use up my energy and physically/mentally make me tired, but it also ripples into future doubts - which is a bit of where I’m at right now.

The other core theme throughout this week was energy fragmentation. There was constant distraction, and I was always being pulled in a bunch of different directions. I entered the week with the belief that I should create the perfect reality. Once I had hit a certain level of consciousness, it would always be easy because reality would do exactly what I wanted it to, when I wanted it, right? So any time I got pulled in other directions or interrupted due to being on-call, I figured I had to keep trying. I’m ending the week starting to explore a new perspective; it’s actually about maintaining your state regardless of what’s going on. And I feel like that skill comes and goes a bit for me. I’m very tolerant until I’m pushed a bit too far. Then I explode.

There are two ways that I can approach this differently, so I guess I’ll use this week as my test run. The first is in adjusting my expectations for myself. I’ll spend 2 hours debugging something for on-call, then still try to get the other work on my todo list done with no adjustment to self-imposed deadlines. I felt like I was absorbing a lot of energy from other people and frustration was being taken out on me. That kind of stuff shocks my nervous system. Friday morning I couldn’t think, which was so odd. I was so disoriented. But I think part of that was because of all of the emotion being thrown at me. I had my heart rate spike many times over a Slack message that ended up being nothing that needed my attention. Then I ended up feeling frustrated. A way I want to navigate this is to start adjusting my deadlines and what I’m working on. I have done this a bit, but I think I can definitely give myself some breathing room around expectations. Even looking at today. I got home from night check, wanted to write, edit all videos, yoga, etc. And I had like 2 hours before it would be really time to go to bed! Then the writing is taking a bit longer than I had expected, but I committed to getting this done. For that reason, yoga is likely not in my cards tonight (the other thing on my todo list).

The second one is to get curious about how I’m feeling and work on grounding in the present. I tend to either be dreaming about the future or harping on regrets of the past. I want to work on learning how to just enjoy the present moment. I’m realizing this is a time in my life where I’m meant to embrace uncertainty. It’s not a time to try to control or predict. And that’s especially uncomfortable because I have no idea when it will end! I kind of know what I’m looking for, I think; a manageable workload & schedule plus the ability to ride every day. Those are 2 very realistic goals that I can actually influence myself by focusing on the small habits. One thing I’m hoping will help me with this is to start meditating again. It’s a practice I used to do very consistently, but then I just started chasing more and more of a high through it. This also feels like a fresh perspective on meditation, so I think that will be helpful. My goal is to truly focus on being present and curious, regardless of how much my old self wants to escape from the current moment.

This also gives me an interesting shift in thinking about the habits I want to work on developing. It’s less about “who do I have to be to get what I want” and instead: “who do I have to be to enjoy the present moment?” In reflecting on it, I think those can end up being 2 completely different things. I’ve been so focused on the former, which I think is partially why I either feel like things are going great or horribly, because that target changes while the rubric does not, just adjusting the new subject. Now that I’m really digging into it, I feel like there’s been an immense amount of self-sabotage to maintain the escape.

I guess that’s the final lesson I’ve had from this week - these patterns love to stick around. There’s going to be moments where they come back, and it’s important to handle those with grace and realistic expectations. Don’t expect perfection but instead strive for consistency. So I guess that’s my goal going into this next week: consistent presence. I’m setting the intention to shift my focus to what I need to enjoy the present moment. I think it’s important to dream and use your imagination, but it can be harmful when it shifts to a way to avoid experiencing life.

Looking back on my tarot pulls this week, Death was a card that commonly came up. I honestly wasn’t clear on what it was pointing to, but it seems like I’m finally getting a glimpse. Death of old identities, in a really powerful way. It’s like the foundation of one of my beliefs was just shaken up a bit - how exciting!

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