Birthday musings
Content warning: brief mentions of anxiety and loss of appetite.
I turn twenty-seven today. My second birthday amidst COVID. It looks nothing like what I could have imagined a year ago, when I moved to Gozo with ambitious plans to start freelancing. I don’t often stop to take account of the journey. Those who know me know I can be fleeting, moving from one project to the next, as many toes dipped in as many ponds as possible. I thrive in that space. It keeps me on my toes. Sometimes those interests last, and those projects reach completion. Sometimes I look away for two days and my trajectory shifts. It is hard to track progress when the end goal is constantly shifting.
What I do know about myself, however, is that I don’t do things in half measures. I am either in with passion and soul, or I am not.
I’d love to say I hit the ground running with my career last March. With covid tanking everything that is exactly what my time and energy should have been spent on. But while I wasn’t neglecting it, I was devoting a lot of energy into my relationships, spiritual growth, and the mental and emotional challenges life surprised me with. On these I did not waver. I started 2020 at my highest and healthiest. Motivated and inspired. And by the end of it I had lost more than I had gained. I experienced panic attacks for the first time in my life. I stopped eating for months. This wasn’t just finding myself back at square one, this was in the minus. It was demoralising and frustrating.
But it took being at that new low for me to recognise I had been investing time and effort into an area of my life that demanded for more but gave nothing in return. I saw no growth. No improvement. I had told myself “I just haven’t found the right approach yet. The right solution.” As I said, I don’t do things in half measures. But as I exhausted one approach after the next I started to accept that if my all still wasn’t enough, if my efforts still didn’t bare any fruits, then my all was going into the wrong thing.
I now know this with certainty. This year I’ve doubled down on my career which had become a passive bystander amidst the chaos. Three months of honest, hard work, and things are moving. I’m learning. I’m finding my footing and my voice in this industry.
“What I do know about myself… is that I don’t do things in half measures.”
I am far from there yet. Covid has changed a lot of things. I have changed. I have had to close doors on people and decisions I believed were the right ones for me. The attention a new venture like this requires keeps me in my office, in a bubble of work and admin. My friends and family have a hard time reaching me as I’ve increasingly shifted to prioritising clients. After a year of distancing, isolation has started reeling its head too. I certainly haven’t felt very inspired to ‘celebrate’ my birthday in quarantine once again. With the new measures, I can’t even spend it surrounded by friends. Or I have to make harsh choices like “which ones”?
Yet strangely, the same work that’s pulling me away from those I care about is also bringing me closer to them. I’m finding that people who don’t even benefit from my efforts are showing up for me. Acknowledging, encouraging, and helping in whichever way they can. Without my asking. Without any conceivable expectation from my end. I can see without a doubt that I am investing my all in the right place this time. Because it is received. It is appreciated. I can see change happening and I am fuelled by it instead of drained. And it reassures me that I am planting seeds in fertile soil this time around.
If you’ve read this far, thank you for being here.
All my best,
Krysta x