On Traveling With A Purpose
And finally having my Michaela Coel year
Hi close friends,
In July, I went on my first ever official Business Trip™ to Austin to help shoot and post social coverage at the launch party of a fiction publication, Tractor Beam, where I’ve been managing social & community efforts for going on five months now. The magazine is focused on imagining climate solutions through speculative storytelling based on Earth and in the soil, so it was only fitting for us to throw a summer solstice celebration in an edible food forest and community garden.
Truthfully, leading up to the trip, I was SO FREAKING NERVOUS. I couldn’t help but feel that anxiety I remember from my very first job working in media, half from imposter syndrome but also jitters of excitement and gratitude that I made it here! And I don’t care if that makes me sound like a dork or a simp for an industry that has long lost its sheen. It’s rare these days to find a job that actually feels like you’re moving the needle in some way for yourself or for society, and I do not take that for granted.
I’ve been part of many large productions before on both the operational and creative side — documentaries to tv shows to commercial sets — but this is the first time I was run-and-gun shooting and posting in real time myself as the certified Social girlie. For some reason, as much as I love watching films and making my own little videos, it’s always felt so intimidating to do it on a professional level. Maybe it’s a result of working with crews full of dude bros or being exposed to office politics and egos that have gnawed at my self-confidence over time.
Was I running around like a chicken with my head cut off? Yes.
Was I sweating profusely in the Texas sun? Yes.
Did I get all the shots I wanted in the exact way I envisioned? No.
But we got what we needed in <48 chaotic hrs, launched our second issue, had a blast doing it, and boy did I learn a helluva lot! I left re-inspired by an IRL community who cares about the planet, literature, and the future just as much if not more than I do. And I even danced with a cowboy. It was a good reminder to myself that everyone starts somewhere, and I wasn’t going to progress sitting inside on my butt.
Also that it’s never too late to learn the skills you want to! I’ve really been on that YOLO kick since, reaching out to friends for advice and resources on how to improve my DIY filmmaking skills, and dare I say I’ve been having FUN?!
I was thinking about how in my 2024 New Years newsletter, I lamented to you all about my existential dissatisfaction, particularly in feeling compelled to keep up appearances with those around me while living in New York:
“While I hustle primarily just to keep up a lifestyle I think I am entitled to, the gap only becomes wider between what I think my purpose on earth is (to be human, make art, and create change) and what I actually do.”
I remember chatting to a similarly disillusioned co-worker at the time in the office, fantasizing about leaving my job to work part-time at a bookstore and work on my own writing again. And here we are, a year and a half later, maybe not working at a bookstore, but giving myself the time and space back to work on my own art and engaging with a project that fuels two of my passions: literature and the environment.
Sure, there are days where I’m like, how am I twenty-eight years old living in my parents’ house, right back where I started? But that anxiety-provoked thought disregards just how much I’ve grown in all those years since being back and most days, that thought is quickly replaced with the assuredness that I’m doing exactly the right thing for myself in this moment. Especially after I look up at the clear open sky from our back deck, or hear the soft background noise of my parents chatting from the other room.
One of my good friends and I would always joke that it was OUR YEAR, referencing writer and director Michaela Coel’s 2021 Emmy speech in which she says:
I just wrote a little something for writers, really. Write the tale that scares you, that makes you feel uncertain, that is uncomfortable. I dare you.
In a world that entices us to browse through the lives of others to help us better determine how we feel about ourselves, and to, in turn, feel the need to be constantly visible, for visibility these days seems to somehow equate to success.
Do not be afraid to disappear, from it, from us, for a while, and see what comes to you in the silence.
But I un-ironically feel like I’m actually having my Michaela Coel year at long last!
So thanks for indulging my flightiness. I’m still here, just disappearing for a while to see what I find in the silence.