I am a Career Dabbler...

An introduction to my journaling out loud.

Hello, I’m Mimi and I’m a career dabbler. I am finally okay with admitting this fact. Arriving here has been an unfolding of myself, a letting go. Writing is something I have never explored beyond a sporadic personal journal, but I have been quietly curious about it ever since the era of WordPress, Tumbler, and the like. I never wanted to take a real stab at it because I hate the idea of sounding like just another “mommy blogger” and I historically tend to doubt my credibility, or why my voice matters. But alas, through a series of life changes and realizations, none of these concerns plague me anymore.

I’m here because I want to write about this process of personal unfolding and the things I learned along the way. I hope to use that lens to explore all things motherhood, relationships, culture, politics, and the tidbits in between…the actual fun stuff that make life worth living like food, style, art, play, travel, and sex.

I am an extreme verbal processor- finding words to describe the constant and delicate balance of living in my head and feeling with my heart permeates my daily existence. I can get lost in the theory of it all, and I often find myself in the metaphysical. So, I have finally succumbed to that nagging slightly self-deprecating voice. That, and a litany of requests from my best friends begging me to create a platform for my stream-of-consciousness brain dumps and for god’s sake to stop texting them so much. So here I am, dabbling in substack.

I’ve always been a bit frenetic, easily distractable, and excited to initiate an idea but not so good at the follow-through. I do not have ADHD. Euphemistically I’m a dreamer, a big picture person. It’s also perhaps why I’m a self-proclaimed dabbler. I don’t like getting bogged down in minutia, details, or tedious things that I liken to working with very small hand tools or sewing. I marvel at people who are drawn to that. Like the woman who quilts, or manages to bake a platter of perfect googly-eyed ghosts and goblins, alongside a themed craft at a Halloween party, and likes it! This is why much to my children’s chagrin my attempts at said projects, especially whilst in the company of others, have been met with quiet smiles of uncertainty as to who the true author of any resulting craft or platter is. “The kids helped,” I sheepishly say. It’s just NOT my thing.

I can barely be bothered with washing my hands properly and I get annoyed with having to brush my teeth. It’s the pesky little things that I find take me out and not into the marrow of life. But my need for achievement and a sprinkling of Type A tendencies often lead me to overzealously barrel into things I should know well enough by now to leave alone. But I don’t, and I constantly end up overwhelmed and resentful, agitated, and longing to call Michael Clayton to come clean up my mess. What a strange alchemy of traits I have, like a living breathing organized chaos. Yet, I know the details matter. It’s those pesky little things that make someone good at something right? Or at least prevent you from getting sick as often. I’m hoping writing this substack helps me work through the details, I hope this substack is more my thing…

I, of course, being me, like to think everything is my thing. I like to tell myself I can do it all! Are we women even living if we aren’t slaying at work (or justifying to ourselves and society why mothering is work), channeling our inner “Little House on the Prairie” with homemade sourdough, looking hot without harboring any vanity or upsetting other women, aging gracefully, maintaining spiritual balance, being present with our kids (if you blink you miss it!), eschewing screen time for loftier neural pathway building activities, and creating wholesome family fun all organized by moi… all while getting your 64 oz of water a Day?! Be all of it, some of it, and none of it, all at once, and make it look effortless. Maybe it’s just me? Did our parents properly account for the psychological crisis that ensues from the smorgasbord of options many women now have? And it’s all on display. Beckoning you to fill every moment you have with living out your lifestyle brand to the extreme. Even making a sandwich has become maximalist. Like the stylized X-games of life when you just want a casual Sunday stroll.

Thanks Instagram.

Well if I’ve learned anything from my foray into adulthood it’s that not only can you NOT be and have everything society and social media might project onto you, but if you are trying to shred it that hard you are probably killing yourself with effort. And that type of effort turns you into your most inauthentic self. It’s exhausting. It makes you prickly. It’s not fun. It’s okay to just outsource shit. Crafting doesn’t have to be your thing. PB & Js are great. It’s okay to become okay with never really being extreme at anything, but trying different things and seeing where the experience leads you. I haven’t come to embrace the notion of not being extreme at anything easily…

Trying to hold all the pieces of me together in the way that I thought they were supposed to look or be while home with three kids during COVID-19, followed by a painful divorce after nearly fifteen years of marriage, was like one long anxiety-inducing game of Jenga. It was extreme. It was wonderful, it was horrible, it was often both. It was trying to win at something absolutely out of my control. I determinedly dragged my heels and turned my face in suspended horror at what the crash of my divorce would illuminate about myself, and the person I loved for half my life. But when I lived in the pain, pulled the teetering block that was precariously holding the whole tower up, and finally gave into the crash, I could no longer avoid having to deal with all the pieces of myself or him that I’d been avoiding. Change brings down the roof on any notion of perfection, and thank god. That was the beginning of the unfolding. When the shock subsided, living became more effortless. Things that were meant to be easy were. Everything was less extreme, less seemingly perfect. I wondered why we couldn’t have come out unscathed, perhaps together and intact. Then I just let go. I stopped dog paddling and I channeled my energy and efforts into things that were bringing me joy, like a casual Sunday stroll.

Change is the antithesis of control, and control is really about insecurity, isn’t it? It’s fueled by the need to validate oneself externally, by the need to have the outside world or someone whose opinion we let matter more than our own, tell you that you are enough. When you let go of control, you stop clinging, you enter a state of responding to what’s flowing to you. Rather than trying to direct the flow tied to some abstract notion of a destination, you allow change to be a state of constant turning inward; a chrysalis of becoming what you’ve always been. Sometimes it’s hard, being vulnerable like that, thinning the veil between the inner me and the projected me. I am human. I have an Ego like the rest of us. I plan things, hope for things, and pine for things. I truly don’t know how else to exist at times. But I’ve freed myself of the part where I judge myself on how well things “worked”—because that’s the thing that’s always beyond our control and dictated by external forces. It humbles you and checks that Ego. It’s a huge relief, embracing my salvation through uncertainty, and accepting all the shadowy bits of myself. It’s discovering true love.

Amid all this personal change ( which I’m sure at this point you're asking yourself why you care enough about my champagne problems to Subscribe to this shit, but maybe I’m finally getting to it), I’ve taken notice of a cultural shift unfolding before me. More than ever it seems people around me are deciding to cultivate a path less obvious, less engendered by a fake sense of being in the driver’s seat, and more a passenger in a spiritual-led caravan to a happier way of existing. Yee-haw!

Enabled by technology, and fueled by the “ideas economy”, we are in the midst of what feels like a societal phase change. The straight and arrow is less appealing, less sexy, and perhaps even less viable? than it was to prior generations. It feels like a Renaissance. Dabblers unite! Sure some people feel they know without a doubt what and who they want to be when they grow up. That’s great. AI hasn’t outsourced things like doctors, yet, so keep at it. But many of us never arrive at knowing what we want to be. Many of us don’t care, or just are the pursuit of crafting what we are. Or, more likely, many of us don’t have a choice, we don’t have the privilege of questioning these things because we do what we have to do to eat. For those people the idea of living “the dream” is unattainable, and for many of us who do attain it, we find ourselves deeply unnerved by how unsettled and unfulfilling it all is. Whose dream was this anyway?

“That's why they call it the American Dream because you have to be asleep to believe it.” George Carlin

But I think writ large we are all just standing back and questioning how much the what and who we think we ought to be has been shaped by forces outside ourselves, forces that have made generations of people slaves to an idea that fulfillment and identity are tied to a linear path of earning degrees, accolades, milestones and most importantly money. Grow up, get married, have children, be successful, buy this, etc. But what are milestones other than living for some future that may or may not happen? Hello, anxiety. What is a career other than creating a means to support a living? What if I don’t want to be any one thing but want to try everything? What does it even mean to live a life we deem worthwhile, and how do we navigate this while also zooming out to consider all the world’s problems? These are the things I think about when I am driving zoned out and jerk back to awareness at the traffic whistle and Jack Harlow lovin’ on me as I turn into the school Drop-off line magically arriving with my children in one piece.

Dare I say I’m optimistic that despite your feed spewing all the nastiness that currently exists out there, there’s a realignment of values happening, a recognition that something is off…a movement away from a reductionist way of interpreting and existing, and a movement toward feeling. Not that it’s all good. I’m well aware there’s an irony in this awakening and the tools that helped get us here now being exploited by the forces we question, being made a part of the capitalist engine we thought we were trying to mellow. The path to turning inward is in some ways another commodified lifestyle choice, a display of ego, and something that can feel disingenuous. Especially if all you’re doing is scrolling and letting it lead you down the rabbit hole of thinking you are going to read and buy your way to enlightenment. Albeit, what are these forces at play other than a phenomenon, or byproduct of us all concurring on an idea? If that’s the case then is it such a bad thing that we are all coalescing on being less analytical?

I feel like as I have awoken to my heart, the world is awakening alongside me. Each intentional decision, as well as uncontrollable circumstance, is honing your ability to tune in, listen, and cultivate the biggest gift we are all born with- our intuition. I’ve learned that plans don’t fail or succeed, they just change. Life is rarely linear. If I embrace what my intuition is telling me, then the need for money aside, it’s enough to just exist. There is no end goal, no pushing past the finish line. No mastery is necessary. There is no “having made it”. Life is just meant to be enjoyed. It’s okay to dabble in stuff. Boxes are dismantled and made into imaginary things just for the sake of imaginary things. I want to exude this for my children. I want this substack to be an exploration into that.

“The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple. And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves.” Alan Watts

If you are anything like me then you still relate to that ageless, contínuos voice in your head. The one that came home from grade school perplexed as to why some random t-shirt you wore was something that would even get noticed, let alone get you teased, to still trying to figure out what business casual means. It’s the you that is just trying to make sense of it all. It’s the voice that gives you a sense of continuity, that tethers us to this thing we understand to be our conscious awareness.

Stop waiting for that voice to have some aha moment, like a warm and cozy greeting to signify you are right where you need to be. That it’s okay to just exist. That feeling, I’ve discovered, is fleeting, and it’s nothing you arrive at. When you find yourself in it, it can be blissful and the closest I’ve been to any sense of the Divine. But more often than not, it’s been experienced on the perfect dose of psychedelics, or through devout meditation. Since life is mostly hurried in-between moments when I am not high or meditating, the art of cultivating that inner bliss as a state of existing becomes the plight of learning what it means to be living in it. To just be here and be now. To accept that change is inevitable. For me that comes from tuning in, and writing it out. And dabbling.