Life Sucks Go Surf.
Burnout shows up in a variety of different ways. Like when you find the new coffee shop on the block. You go there every day for a year and relish in the joy of this one place. Your place. One day you decide you no longer want their coffee. The vibe has become stale. The grass is always greener so they say. There are times when I believe that statement. Other times I am so frustrated by my own frustrations of wanting MORE. Daydreaming and questioning if the grass is actually greener that I get lost. The world is made up more, more, more, more. Capitalism in the 21st Century, watch that and try not to get bummed out on the human condition. We are trained to “be better.” Taught how to always find a way to “improve ourselves.” I worked on an advertising campaign that was “strive for greatness.”
As a product of NYC, I believe those statements. I built my life around them. We maybe have said them more like “never not working” or “hustle hard”. It’s all the same. Never satisfied with where you are in the moment you are in. If I exhale long enough to catch a glimpse of right now, look around at where I am and what I am doing, my life is fucking great. I’ve moved through some of the heaviest blocks in my life. I came out on the other side of those blocks. I live in the most magical place on earth. My life is by design not default. I fought so hard for this life that everyone seems to always comment “oh must be nice.” Or the less passive-aggressive response “you made the right decision.”
The fact of the matter is I made the decision to find happiness, it did not find me. My life felt in shambles. People ask me why or how I got to Hawaii and I am not exactly sure. I just did. I had been coming here on vacation. I liked how I felt when I was here. I loved how beautiful it was. But like any New Yorker, there was no way I was ever moving to Hawaii because what would I do here. Once I arrived everyone wanted to know why I came. I tried to always muster up some creative thought-out answer to the looming question. The truth is every time someone asks me I am at a loss for words. The door opened I walked in and just like I Alice fell down my own rabbit hole of Aloha. I bet it all on the rainbow.
This was not the first time I had manifested a life beyond my wildest dreams. I remember finding a journal after I was full-time at Spotify. I was writing about where I wanted to be in 6 months. Working a job traveling around the world. Boom. I got it. Ask and you shall receive, but what does it matter if the entire time you are living your dream you are crying, whining, and groaning for something else. I pissed on it. I shoved it away because of my own obsession with burnout, chaos, my feelings, and trauma. I was addicted to my own emotions. If I cried people paid attention to me. When I was in trouble or lost they were there for me. Abandonment shows its face in the wackiest of ways.
I never meant to do it. Once it was gone, what broke my heart was not that I lost it, but how I was the main factor in losing it. I do believe you have to lose it all to put it back together but that was such an awakening to how sick I was. The burnout of being a person conflicted with every aspect of my life that I had no choice but to move to this foreign land. To take the biggest risk of my life and bet it all on the rainbow. Put my faith in something I knew nothing about surfing, sunshine, and ME. I went down this wormhole and eventually found a mosh pit of aloha. By the time I finally found the mosh pit, I was pretty mangled.
When I got here I felt so lost without this identity of work, money, and fame. My entire existence prior to this trip was built upon being famous. Known for something. In NYC I was a thing. A girl about town who had her hand in a little bit of everything. A special creature with the ability to be at the center of things, just under the radar enough to not be fully in the spotlight. Quietly but not quietly bringing things to life that people felt a type of way about. I never wanted accolades but I wanted accolades. I desired deep down to be noticed but never thought about actually doing that. It felt too self-involved. I lacked the self-worth to ever do it anyway. I was in the mix just enough to feel validated by being there.
My work spoke for itself. My personality was one of a kind. People were drawn to me, which I felt since I was a child. Again none of it matters if you can’t see the beauty in all of it. A product of a broken home darkness felt like it was following me. The rain would come back and sure enough there I was stuck without an umbrella yet again. I wasn’t prepared for life the way I thought other people were. In my head, most people had all this support around them to get them there. Closeness with their family made it easier for them to navigate the twists and turns of life. I am and have always been this self-made person. The advice I was given never resonated with me so I went looking for my own answers.
A tortured soul perhaps.
My point is my life, once I took control of it and did what I wanted to do was great. Despite all the darkness I seem to always portray, my life before Hawaii was dope. My life in Hawaii is even better. The attachment to all the more is what brought me to my knees. The need for more drugs and booze took me down. The attachment to wanting to be known for something landed me in the middle of nowhere with pieces everywhere and me not even sure how to pick them up. I couldn’t even see them, but once I put rose gold lens in all the frames that was a different story.
A story about a girl on a quest to find hope.
Eventually, we are all going to get so burnout on something that we look at our life and think this sucks. I want to bail on this or that. I desire more of what is in front of me. I don’t think there is anything wrong with motivation and expansion. It’s being lost on the more, clouded by the greener grass that will destroy the path. I fell back in love with being alive. I learned to see the beauty in everything. Ya Hawaii helped that. Staring for hours and hours at the majestic scenery of earth. Watching the sky turn colors every hour. Spending time in warm salty water that began to penetrate my skin and hair. I didn’t have to worry about showing up to impress people because there was no one around to impress.
I spent almost 3 years by myself. Living alone. Dining alone. Sleeping alone. Fucking alone. Doing all of my new favorite things alone. That choice to get uncomfortable hanging out with someone I did not know, was a monumental moment on the path of my life. It felt safe and protected not letting the vibration of others distract my new crush. Jumping all in with someone who was worth the work. I finally was worth the work.
Who would have thought that doing more things that brought you joy would feel like work?
There was so much discomfort in searching for rainbows. I like the rain and cold. The cocoon of leather and fur and only temporarily tan was what felt right. My life drastically changed when I starting doing more things that brought me joy. It is that simple. That is the magic potion. I stopped whatever I was doing that I despised and started doing things I loved. That did not magically happen overnight. When I arrived in NYC it felt as if the first few years were this magical time of self-discovery. Learning about what I loved and hated. Finding inspiration in ways I never dreamed of. Exploring every nook and cranny of that island to formulate my own opinion on the east coast’s magical fantasy island, the place where dreams do actually come true.
Now here I am many years later broken in different ways. Staring out to sea at this new magical fantasy island where different dreams will come true. I choose to be happy today. I listen very closely to the voices in my head that keep me down. I break down what they are trying to say to me, and share them with close special people in my life. People I trust will slap me right in the face with aloha and reality. Life is not complicated we make it that way. Every day I choose to participate in my life. The life I built, destroyed and finally cherished.
So you want to stop hating yourself, your life, your kids, your husband, your hair, your body, your job, etc find something beautiful and look at it. Just stare deep into the eyes of beauty and see what happens. Find joy in the most basic of things. Believe that right here at this moment even the smallest thing of bliss can keep you solid in not wanting or searching for more. It’s called being in the present moment, ever heard of it?
No one said this would ever be easy in fact, finding and maintaining joy is one of the hardest things I have ever done. It was and is worth every obstacle I faced to get here. I look around at my life and it is everything I have ever wanted. There is no need for me to keep seeking more when the cup of aloha is overflowed. For now, I am going to just take 25 deep breaths and drink that cup of aloha. Today I will delight in how it feels.
I bet it all on the rainbow, and I won.
Self Love Action:
Make a list of all the things that bring you joy, when you are feeling down and out, take that list out and go do one of them.