One of a Billion Mediocre Posts on the Internet
On the resurgence of old fears and habits, their disruption of progress, and reframing "accomplishment"
Sometime between when I arrived back home from my travels at the end of April and now - early June - I’ve become as lost as the day that I stepped away from my career. I still proclaim to be “on sabbatical” but somehow took on a volume and intensity of work and passion projects that made me busier and just as stressed as I was when I had a job that was grinding me to my core.
It doesn’t feel like this happened gradually. It feels like I’ve been pummeled by those ocean waves I was so afraid of in Sri Lanka, which followed me to Brooklyn and crashed on me in the supposed safety of my urban apartment. The irony is comedic. The waves crashed, I survived the ‘washing machine,’ and when my head bobbed above the water and I looked around, I found myself in a place that I desperately didn’t like and didn’t want to inhabit.
And now I’m thinking - “How did this happen? No one did this to you, Cortney. You did this to yourself. You made a series of choices that brought you exactly here. And for what purpose?”
I have never in my life been in a period of more freedom than I have now. It has had its moments of magic - as was the case with my travels earlier this year - but also a responsibility to my mental and emotional health that I’ve neglected recently.
Disconnecting From Old Habits
I’m reading and re-reading the last article I wrote because I wrote it for myself. I was deep in a place of knowing how my current state of distress was caused by my life-long habit of over-intellectualization. A habit I want to break, first by acknowledging it and naming it. I recognize that it shrouds my ability to feel the expansion and contraction of my body. It is a habit that behaves exactly like an addiction.
I ended up in this current state of overwhelm, sadness, and exhaustion because I’ve moved in the direction of intellectual yesses rather than visceral yesses. I’m struggling with understanding the range of feelings in my body - it can’t be as binary as either a Yes or a No. Certainly, something that feels intriguing may not feel like an immediate Yes or a No. It may feel magnetic. And when it does, can there be a wrong reason for this magnetism?
This sabbatical is still teaching me every day, including the hardest lessons about my own decision-making. And what I keep finding at the root of it is a need for external validation, fed entirely by my habit of over-intellectualization. I can’t say ‘yes’ to wading in the shallow water - I must swim out to where the waves are the biggest and scariest. I can’t say ‘yes’ to one glass of wine - I must consume the whole bottle. I can’t say ‘yes’ to a 3 mi run in the park - I must traverse an epic trail across several hundred miles. I can’t say ‘yes’ to sketching for pure enjoyment for an hour - it must be the source of the next greatest art company.
This need for external validation comes from my fear of being mediocre. If I’m being, doing, or making something extraordinary, my core being - all of the intellect, passion, and instinct - cannot be ignored or denied. And this, to me, justifies the perils of drained energy, or even resulting disease.
So I’m stuck right now.
While I still want to be extraordinary, and I still crave the external validation, I no longer want the energy drain, and I care more about my longevity than I do about the short-term discomfort of over-extending myself.
The way to get myself unstuck from this place is to let go of my fear of mediocrity.
A Helpful and Soulful Reframing
I went to a spiritual advisor recently, to get another perspective on this - I’ve already talked the ears off of my friends and family who will listen. It wasn’t my first visit, but it was the first time I was told that I’m a new soul. This surprised me greatly. I’ve always thought of myself as an old soul. I don’t have a good basis for thinking this, I just do. But hearing that I’m a new soul filled me with an immediate wash of warmth - like the comfort of a warm blanket or a healing hug.
In an instant, I thought of all of the things in my life I’ve tried to accomplish - with tenacity, ferocity, passion, discipline, strength - and I’ve objectively failed at. I’ve often felt like life is harder for me than most people. Others seem to dance with ease to ultimate success through situations in which I give 110% and barely move the needle. This has always puzzled, frustrated, and saddened me, as much as I try to let it go and just be ok with “doing my best.”
And in an instant, upon hearing that I am a new soul, it occurred to me that maybe my job in this life is not to accomplish any of those things, from a societal/objective perspective. Maybe my job is simply to nurture this new soul - fill it with love, allow it to explore its wonder, keep it safe from corruption - so that after I’m gone, it can grow and flourish with a solid base of understanding. It’s not up to me what happens in its next life, but I can take care of it while it inhabits me.
Without Conclusion
I haven’t felt much like writing lately, as I don’t want to disrupt the narrative of a woman in charge, who claimed her freedom - herself - by leaving a career that did not serve her and is on a mission to make a life for herself that is more authentic. But if I’m being honest (that’s the entire point), then that narrative will be disrupted with uninteresting moments of relapse into old patterns, and the messes to clean up as a result from those relapses. I offer my apologies to the reader (this includes yours truly) who wants a resolution to my current fears - I don’t have one right now.
Maybe one day, my creative fire will be sparked by this whole idea, and a brilliant creation will come out it. Then again, maybe that won’t ever happen, and this moment of my sabbatical will just live here, as one of a billion mediocre posts on the internet.
Ahh Cortney. You are far more relatable than you know! I write about my amazing Camino journey in my publication but that was 3 years ago and I am still swirling around old questions and trying to disrupt old patterns. It's a little easier as a result of that experience, but damn it, nobody ELSE changed while I was gone so it is up to me to completely repattern all these relationships and habits. And you better believe that that old, pre-Camino wiring kicks in, still. Only now it hurts because I know there's a better way but I seem to be losing the memory for it. (I suppose that is one reason why I write my blog -- to revisit and remember.)
I think a lot of people show up on Substack and elsewhere like sages but sometimes I think about how they must be when they are staring at the mirror at night, running an errand, doing the dishes, navigating life without the filters and followers. Probably a lot like you and me. That means we are all at the same level. Mediocre? Or continually striving, despite the outcome which is out of our hands? I would say that makes us pretty damn special after all.
Hugs, my friend.
The part that resonates most is the hedonistic adaptation around your own free time!!!! I am the same. I will make 85 projects up for a period where I’m supposed to just relax. I didn’t even rest through my hysterectomy, which was one of the most excusable rest periods I’ve been offered in decades. I’ll show you my to do list for the time I had off. It is silly. My overflowing plate of obligations is always 90 percent my fault. I also feel like other people have a less effortful time at all the things. Anyway, just came to agree with Rebecca that you are relatable and that we’re all out here just trying to chill out some more than we let ourselves.