I'm a Self-Stopper

Adventures in getting out of my own way.

Nov 29, 2022

The thing about having an employer who isn't you is that there's someone to be angry at (even if you keep it to yourself). The release valve empties out into the World, and then you can detach at the end of the workday or shift with an exhale. You ruffle your feathers like a duck, expelling tension after a skirmish, and float away. Ah. The healthy, freeing goodness of compartmentalization.

Don't get me wrong--I watched "Severance" recently and do NOT wish for that level of identity rupture (watch it for yourself; it's Work/Life Balance taken to its nightmarish extreme). But since March, when I quit my last job, I've been attempting and failing to be my own boss, and among the many drawbacks of this arrangement, I hadn't accounted for the sheer amount of rage that gets turned inward, to my own guts, and from which I can't clock out. Any snags in the system are my own fault. Empty bank account? That's on me. Terrible scheduling? Nonexistent infrastructure? Chaos?! No one to complain to but this guy right here. The energy is a closed loop.

About 2 seconds before cursing out my collapsible background, which knocks over plants and punches me in the face whenever I unfold it for a self-tape.

It makes me miss serving tables something fierce, but then... I showed up on this planet to grow my soul like a stubborn cactus. The boulder in my way is here to be scaled. The Final Boss level is always me vs. me. And, as my dear friend Cassie once shared with me as her lifehack mantra for entering the fray of a stressful shift at the restaurant where we worked in Midtown together for years, This is just the challenge I need.

I have a tendency toward tons of great, sparkling, expansive ideas, and a terrible time pulling them down to the material plane and following them through. But. I crossed some invisible threshold over the past year wherein my body absolutely, flat-out refuses to engage the kinds of things I used to be able to force myself to do, namely giving away 30-50 hours a week for some company's profit, or for somebody else's dream. "nObOdY wAnTs To WoRk AnYmOrE!" might apply to me, but not for the reasons the haters might think. It's not laziness, or even entitlement. It's that the growing rumble of internal revolution can no longer be ignored. And I tried! (see: a two-week stint serving tables at a very fancy establishment this summer during which my indignance could barely fit through the front door.) My patience is shorter and my tolerance for poorly managed bullshit utterly gone. I've outgrown my ability to be a good corporate workerbee, but unfortunately, replacement plans for regular income have not kept pace. My bank account remains at 0.

I want the whole smorgasbord!!! It’s not lucrative. Yet.

Since June of this year, I've begun to formalize three separate businesses, in an attempt to prove wrong my narrative that I Can't Make Money Doing What I Enjoy. (And no need to remind me—I’ve read Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert and I know the pitfalls of depending upon a creative passion to pay the bills. This is more about putting on my big girl pants and sustaining myself in a sustainable way.) THESE ARE SEEDS PLANTED. But by the time they grow enough to pay my rent, I may be back living in my childhood bedroom.

Prodigal Objects, a vintage resale outfit dreamed up on a road trip in TX and realized in NYC with my friend Natalie. We peddle beautiful, practical housewares and decor from the '40s-'80s at the Brooklyn Flea, with a website and Instagram live auctions underway. Guess what? It barely breaks even, and not even that if you factor in the labor and time required to haul heavy, fragile things up and down four flights of stairs, wash and wrap and unwrap and wrap and unwrap them a million times over. There's breakage. It's exhausting. A delight! But exhausting. And good practice.
Arranging pretty things into tableaux since 1982.
Topaz Editorial: copywriting, editing, and proofreading, across a multitude of mediums.
Tarot for Self-Realization: Grounded insight through symbolism, archetypes, metaphor, and myth.

Sounds great, right?! Sure! And this list doesn't even include my Somatic Therapy training, or all the self-tapes I submit as an actor, or the podcast I want to relaunch, or the retreat I'll be hosting in Joshua Tree in March 2023.

But. The reality of any such businesses dies as soon as I need to be a self-starter. It's embarrassing but true. I'm not great at disciplining myself, and it's part ADHD, and part jadedness. I often pace my apartment giving myself tech neck, scrolling, or sit on my (beautiful but VERY uncomfortable) green velvet couch, my body in paralyzed stillness while my brain races and yells like a caged wild animal.

In moments like this, which happen, oh, about 65% of every day (the remaining 35% is spent meandering in the neighborhood or napping), the only solution is to Move My Body. I hear my friend Elise's voice in my head (she's one of the smartest people I know, and also familiar with being undone by executive dysfunction), saying: "5 4 3 2 1!" and then I'm UP, and music is ON, and I dance around my living room faster than the monkey mind can catch up.

For me, there is no start without a jump. No electricity without a shock. Momentum is hard-won--almost impossibly-won. I shake myself awake as from a nightmare. I woo the Muse while in motion.