i hope you're doing what you want.
Reflections from quarter three of 2023
Are you doing what you want?
Admittedly, I’m not well versed in Brent Faiyaz’s music (or much current music really), but when the TikTok dance trend to his song Jackie Brown officially arrived to Instagram, these lyrics sent me into my regularly scheduled existential crisis:
Only been a few hours, but it felt like days
Only been days, but it feel like months
Been gone for a year, only wrote like once
Life move fast when you do what you want
I guess I'm doing what I want
Hope you doing what you want (What else?)
But what you want? (I don't know)
I don’t know either, Brent.
For the first time ever, I wrote down quarterly goals for the year in January in hopes that I’d actually prioritize them throughout 2023. Quarter One’s goals consisted of savings goals, debuting and promoting my podcast Sheer Creativity, and submitting my writing to several publications. Quarter Two capitalized on those same goals, only with a few additions including traveling to a new city and starting this newsletter. Now that Quarter Four is upon us, I have nothing really planned other than surviving to see the following day.
As time progressed, my list of goals began to dwindle due to my decision to do less. While this year has been a defining year of creativity for me and I stretched myself across multiple mediums, I’m now suffering from a type of burnout that makes you re-evaluate all your life decisions that led to this exhaustion.
I told myself that I’ll always be doing something creative, and because I’m such a wandering soul, I want to try multiple things that may feel like home to me. In addition to being a written poet, I also want to be a successful slam poet. In addition to being a podcaster, I also want a thriving merch shop. I feel the overwhelming pressure to be multi-faceted and monetized in so many arenas that maybe I don’t know what I truly love. Nothing is wrong with wanting to expand as a creative; where the issue lies is in focus.
Fellow Substack writer and co-host of the To My Sisters podcast
said it best in the episode below about being multi-faceted:“Are you good at multiple things, or do you simply lack focus?”
Our culture unhealthily ties our worth to the things we do in every area of our lives, whether that be in our pursuit of relationships, careers, parenthood, etc. I constantly wonder if I’m doing enough, so my solution is to pile on more tasks until I believe I am worthy. All this ideology has left me with is a shattered self-confidence and an irregular sleep schedule.
Now that the end of the year is approaching, I’m seeking one practice that I can lose myself in adoration of, or like Brent says, life moves fast when you do what you want. As I reflect over the year, I realize that 2023 hasn’t been moving too swiftly. I’ve felt every moment, and there’s something about the transcendence within creation that I miss, rather than a focus on the work element. I started many things, but never gave myself the opportunity to be lost in the enjoyment of them.
I now sit back and question whether I want to be doing what I’m extending my energy toward, or if I’m afraid to be seen as doing too little.
In this final quarter, I hope to do what I desire, even if that means I want nothing. Even if it means life seems less glamorous.
Here’s to us creatives finding rest, and us discovering that our worth is not tied to what we do, but rather who we are as people.
What does Laraya like this week?
What I’m reading: This week,
wrote about the beauty in changing your mind and letting go.