A Personal Renaissance
Editor’s note: This essay paints a picture of my personal experience during the recent events of Covid-19 and is not meant to mitigate individual experience of loss, trial, or pain. Our world right now is fragile and rebuilding. If you are struggling, anxious, or feel pressure to perform during this time, I encourage you to seek peace and hope in the ways best suited for you.
My quarantine has been, in short, a rolling succession of independence and realignment. At the start of 2020 I felt this year was going to be different. Something in my spirit had stepped into a new chapter of life, and I knew the dissonance and turmoil of the previous decade had finally come to an end. Ironically, in the center of this pandemic, I can say with all sincerity the road to self discovery and the exhilaration attached with independence is a gift unlike any other, giving way to a cup running over with joy and peace. Rich in curiosity, adventure, and a never-ending pensive consideration, I find myself remembering bits and pieces of a past self in this current season.
Creativity is a fickle friend. Unique to each their own, possessing process and qualities only the creative knows. For me, security and self actualization continually prove themselves to be the foundations upon which I need for the creative process to exist, let alone bear fruit. When void of these, I’m tired. I need to know the fundamentals of the world around me will remain the same to have the emotional and intellectual space to enter into creativity. At the start of 2020, I was walking into a new year (and decade) with an uncertain future, professionally and personally. I needed to find a new place to call home in my career as an art director, and as a 31-year-old single woman who found herself newly house hunting. I needed a place to lay my head and open my heart and home to the world. In a fit of rage one evening around 11pm, I walked around the bare streets in darkness, oscillating between anger and defeat, with some tears in between. Despite that, I knew this year was going to be different and chose to believe this was a moment in life where rejection was simply redirection. Fast forward to today, where by truly an act of God, I found the most perfect place to call home in that same neighborhood I walked around that evening a few weeks prior. I have a sense this place is one to lay down roots—a pillar of security and an invitation for creativity and vulnerability.
I have moved 12 times in 10 years. Twelve. Some of those were to new homes in the same city, some across state lines, and a few even across the country. So, needless to say, I am no stranger to moving, and moving on my own. I’ve packed up the same mugs and pillows and blankets more times than I can count, and I’ve found new flows in rooms and homes that speak well to my inner process and creativity. All of these have instilled a new, stronger sense of independence, while the longing to not do it alone simultaneously (but slowly) grows stronger. Make no mistake, I love my independence. I love the freedom that comes with owning your own time. I love that I bought a ticket to Paris on a whim and went for a week and had the trip of a lifetime. I love that I’ve picked myself up out of the most heartbreaking of rejections and found new ways to grieve and process. I love that through those things, I find more respect for myself and my future relationships and friendships. I love that I've learned how to self-soothe, self actualize, and self adjust. Without the moments of solitude we cannot find the moments of surrender.
Last Saturday, I put together a kitchen island by myself. I drank hot coffee (always black), ate a blackberry almond croissant, and Gilmore Girls played in the background. It was frustrating, but I made the moment as light as I could and finished it by early afternoon. My grocery run later that evening was more or less for essentials, with one outlier: octopus. When I approached the man behind the counter I asked if they had octopus already prepped (the only one I saw was whole, head attached, mocking my insensitivity). I quickly realized octopus always comes whole, and I was in fact going to have to prep the dish myself. That meant cleaning (most are pre-washed and frozen but still need to be rinsed), removing the head, beak, and innards. I was intimidated at best, guilty at my most vulnerable. When I finally opened the brown butcher paper, the octopus slid down onto the butcher block of my kitchen island and, and, as embarrassed, yet confident, as I am to say this—I screamed. In my kitchen, by myself, from a dead octopus. I laughed, turned on jazz music, poured some red wine, and started cooking.
There have been very few moments in my life where I’ve felt proud, or even accomplished about my work. My yardstick has never been another’s success but always my own, making it an ever-moving target. This week, however, I had a moment of clarity that came from this little culinary adventure. As small and silly as it may be, cooking octopus was a risk I hadn’t taken yet as a cook. It challenged my moral compass as well as my skill set and when it was all said and done, I realized I had a spark in me I hadn’t felt in a long time. There is an entire essay yet to be written on how we lose said sparks, or more importantly, how we unknowingly let people take them from us, but I’ll save it for another day. This season of solitude is creating a space of rediscovery, and fostering a curiosity and fervor I haven’t felt in years. It is putting pieces back together of a past self I’ve known but didn’t know how to reach. It’s two fold, really: first, solitude allows me to pursue creativity and thought freely without constraint of time, and second, I find myself in a place of true stability. My community is loyal, honest, and genuine. My work is challenging and exciting and it is a joy to continue to learn more about the company and my coworkers. My home is my own— a blank canvas I get to paint upon to curate an extension of myself in the place I live. I find myself considerably blessed in such an unfathomable time, and I am forever grateful.
I started this site with the idea to usher people into authentic conversations—provocative, thoughtful, intentional, and well informed. Since then, it has largely been a way to outsource my creativity and hobbies, and instead I’ve had those conversations in quiet with people who make me feel safe enough to question, wonder, and debate. Now, I want to bring those online. (Soon—it’s coming) I have been filling my time with some of the greatest thinkers and people of wonder I can find. I listened to the entire “On Second Thought with Trevor Noah” podcast non-stop until I caught up to the latest episode. I know, I’m late to the game on that one, but now I get it. Free time has been filled with books and podcasts and shows featuring Bell Hooks, Eliza Griswold, Athena Calderone, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Ava DuVernay, and Irrfan Khan, to name a few. I don't know if I would have ventured into the deep world of podcasting without this time of solitude. It has created space for me to rediscover why I started this site, and what I want it to become. Solitude has reignited my creativity.
The state of the world is one right now where every root is being torn out and the ground being resown. We grieve for Ahmaud. We grieve our American leadership. We grieve our economy, our jobs, our world. Could it be possible that during this time when the world has stopped, when the diseases (literal and metaphorical) which riddle our society are being uprooted, exposed, and demolished, that the ground is begging for new soil? Could it be that we are being asked to use this time well and thoughtfully, and are being given the opportunity to recreate what our world looks like in the coming years? Could the world be asking us to build a new foundation, one of stability and understanding—and of a willingness to learn? My hope for us, despite the grief in solitude, is we would choose to surrender and rebuild—to process, discover, fight, grow, and challenge the things most important in the world and in our personal lives. My hope for you, and all of us, is to find peace and acceptance and turn it into action, and if you’re like me, creativity. Maybe if we can do this, we’ll find ourselves, as I have, in a personal renaissance.
