The End of Two Eras: A story about alignment, an office, a Baywatch tent, and a short blue bob.

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Sometimes, things in my life line up. It’s like looking up at the clock and seeing 1:11 every day for a week. I call it alignment and it’s sort of one of my guiding spiritual principles. It’s one of the many ways that I know I’m where I’m supposed to be in this topsy-turvy existence. 

As these words are coming out of me, I realize that yesterday I had a great big day of energetic alignment, and while writing about this is new to me, I’m going to give it a shot.  

I got a haircut yesterday. I gave myself one haircut during quarantine, and I got a trim one other time, but other than that, I let it grow. I told myself I was growing it out, but I think that was a grasp at some autonomy. I wanted to feel like it was my choice, not another symptom of being forced indoors by a global pandemic that was killing thousands of people every day. 

After a serendipitous meeting that’s another story on its own, I found a local salon that was doing outdoor haircuts, I booked instantly. I cut off around 8 inches of my hair. Now I’m sporting a gray and baby blue bob. 

Immediately after the big chop, I had another layer to shed. 

After 10 months of not using my shared office space due to COVID-19, I moved out. I’ve been pushing the day back with a regularity that you could set a clock to. When the rent was due each month, I’d text my studio mate and tell her I would Venmo her rent for one more month. It seemed like I was doing it because I didn’t want to deal with actually moving out. In reality, what I was doing was avoiding the emotions of moving out. And there were many.

More than anything—and even though I shared it with two wonderful studio mates—that space was a space of my own. When my studio mates were there it was truly the most supportive environment. We could bitch about meetings that could have been emails or emails we shouldn’t have to answer, which is the single most important thing about sharing an office with other people. 

Most of the time, though, there wasn’t anybody else there. I could work at my leisure and listen to music; I could turn the music off and write in silence; I could walk to the coffee shop, where I knew I’d see two or three people who loved me.

I hired my first (and only) assistant there. I shot product photos there. I sent thousands of emails from there. I also spent valuable alone time there, when I needed a break to process during many emotional highs and lows in 2019. I would order snacks on GoPuff, lay on the golden couch, and watch comedy specials on Netflix to punctuate my crying with at least a little laughter. I got rejected more times in that office than I can count, but I also made more money in that office than I ever had before.

In terms of achievements, being able to afford to pay a second rent each month on a space that was just for work was one of my biggest to date. 

And yesterday, after crying on the gold couch one last time to Maggie Rogers, I said goodbye. 

Since I was a kid, I’ve always liked to make little spaces just for me. Some of my first memories are of setting up a whole second bedroom outside under a Baywatch tent in my backyard and declaring it my house. I spent the summer of 1997 under that tent, watching it rain and reading books. It was my own world.

I’ve always craved space of my own, and even though I hadn’t used it much in the last 8 months, I still feel sentimental about the office space no longer being a part of my life. 

This morning, as I wrote in my morning pages I realized how excited I am for what’s next, for what moving on from my dear and treasured office might mean. Most of the time in my life when I’ve been asked to let go of something, no matter how hard the letting-go has been, I’ve found a way to get back to center and move forward into something better. 

Though I am tender about this, I have a lot of hope that something better is around the corner. I am looking ahead at my future—officeless and with very short blue hair.

Reading: nothing right now! It’s week 4 of the Artist’s Way which is no distraction week and that means no reading???? I did finally get Gabrielle Korn’s new book Everybody (Else) is Perfect and I’m very excited to read it next week. P.S. I am now an affiliate for my favorite online bookstores, Bookshop.org! If you purchase any books I recommend from here on out, I’ll make a small percentage off of each sale! Wahoo!

Writing: lava lamps, accelerated reader, ancestry.com, and my grandmother. 

Listening: still listening to Uncanny Valley by Anna Wiener and Pod Save America but that’s on pause. Lots of American Football this week. 

Watching: My mom use face filters on Instagram video chat. It’s delightful.  

Buying: nothing, currently. 

Focusing on: not being distracted.

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