Most Popular Loner
On re-learning your own voice. (FORMER VERSION DELETED)
Original send-out of this essay had typos & a missing section…. Re-sent out.
In 2020, a friend surprised me with a gift that reminded them of me.
White t-shirt. & in large, all-caps black text on the front, it reads:
MOST POPULAR LONER
I remember laughing when I pull it out of the bag.
So fucking me.
I’m such a sucker for resonance
The problem with this, is ironically the same as my gift…
I can find (produce) it anywhere.
There’s a version of me who doesn’t shut up. The yapper. Social butterfly. Hasn’t stopped making friends since she learned how to talk. Goes on passionate tangents while coaching entrepreneurs, guiding clients, training talent, closing deals.
There’s also a version of me who doesn’t have anything to say. The thinker. Recluse writer. Has something to process. Can isolate, even while still in the room with you.
The first me is more noticeable. Simply because it calls for attention, by traditional means. But people with good presence & senses are effortlessly aware of the second. They can feel my energy leave the room, even if physically, I’m still “company”.
I’ve noticed, at dinner tables with my family, in the corner of all the action with friends, in small moments with my boyfriend, during calls with clients, talent & prospects, many of the people I love, can do the same.
Maybe you can too.
I’ve grown to hate using the word “quiet” in my writing, because AI over-uses it in content… But it’s the quiet version of you. The one who quietly craves to be honored, without having to ask for it.
Everyone has these two versions, but not everyone learns how to honor the second.
I got a lash fill in a foreign country. I felt some irritation the whole time in retrospect, especially in my right eye. But it’s minor, I think. It’s second nature to thug it out. I don’t tend to worry. No big deal. It’ll be okay.
A couple hours later, I open the red, inflamed eyes I’ll be dealing with for the next couple days. The problem’s grown. Especially in my right eye.
This sweet girl’s used some sort of material during the appointment my eyes aren’t happy with. I do some “discovery” the next morning as the problem’s worsened by texting my lash girl at home to figure out the problem. It’s not the glue. It’s the strips she put under my eyes, & it must’ve been slid under my almost-closed right eye just enough to do some damage. You can tell by the redness of the bottom half of my right eye-ball, as I get some medicinal eyedrops & slowly progress in healing over the next couple days.
I have this guilty pleasure with looking into spiritual meaning.
I notice the “guilty pleasure” element as I’m talking to a client recently…
Anyways, I ask Claude about the spiritual meaning behind an irritated right eye…
The right eye sits on the solar/masculine/active side. The outward eye. What I’m projecting, how I’m looking at the future, my public-facing gaze.
(This, as opposed to my left eye, which is the lunar/feminine/receptive counterpart. Past, intuition, what I’m letting in.)
Irritation in this channel commonly reads as:
Something I’m projecting outward that isn’t fully sitting right with me (my body flagging a register mismatch)
Something I’m refusing to look at directly in my forward-facing trajectory
Overuse of the active/projective mode without enough receptive balance, too much output not enough intake
A vision or decision that wants closer inspection before I keep moving through it
In Traditional Chinese Medicine, eyes route through the liver meridian. Frustration, anger, decisions deferred, plans not yet acted on. Right side tends to carry the assertive/willful charge specifically.
In Egyptian symbolism, the right eye is eye of ra (solar, projective). Left is horus (lunar, intuitive). An irritated right eye in that frame is a flag in the projective channel, not the receptive one.
I describe looking into the spiritual meaning of things as a guilty pleasure, which as I’d reflect back to anyone I’m advising, reveals a bit of internal shame. Something you enjoy but don’t feel “safe” enjoying, because something inside you hasn’t given yourself permission to enjoy it.
I’m most conscious of the fact that spiritual meaning is a guilty pleasure of mine when my tendency to talk about spirituality in a mocking, silly way in a context where spirituality is honored. Like in 1:1s with other spiritual types.
Like anything I joke about, I’m playing into the worst stereotype of the thing.
I do it about being a woman. About being a closer. About being an wifi money maker. About being an ignorant American chick in Europe. Things I, on a deeper level, take more seriously.
I’m in a 1:1 the other day with a client & meta-notice myself express this, because it doesn’t feel necessary here. The playful downplaying of something meaningful to me. It helps soften (protect) myself in contexts where it’s not as safe, but it feels unnecessarily brute in spaces where it’s honored.
She talks about how people ask her “how did you become a DJ?”
& she felt like, before she can even answer that question, she needs to write this piece.
I grinned.
It resonated with the version of me who doesn’t have anything to say.
That stream of thought hasn’t been processed privately, sufficiently enough, to share with any clarity. But I can seem so sharp & verbal, this side of me can frustrate people when it needs space.
It can get flagged as avoidance. Or withdrawal. & sometimes it is. But other times, it’s something to honor. & it’s difficult for people to trust you know which is which. Especially when they want or need something from you right now.
Those who’ve learned to honor this space, & discern what it is, learned it the hard way.
Every time you share your thought or your story or your plan, before you’ve had 1:1 time with it, it’s like giving a little piece of your soul to people who aren’t ready.
It feels like this sacred thing that once didn’t survive exposure. Or at worse, was completely exploited. So you learn to shut your mouth & let it build inside. You take it, hopefully somewhere safe. You learn the moment things are shared, they no longer solely belong to you. They risk being mishandled, every time. & it’s a necessary risk in many cases. But that risk is real.
A lot of meaningful ideas, dreams, plans die from exposure. Either premature exposure, poorly timed exposure, or overexposure. & it’s tricky to create the space to discern when the right time to share the right things. This is another practice.
You leave treasured things vulnerable to projections.
People project their experiences. Their fears, doubts, jealousy, limitations. Their “wisdom”. Their fake support, expectations & rules for the way “right” should look. Onto things that were still growing. On things that empower us, but reveal their fragility when exposed too much, too soon, or in the wrong places.
Some of our most treasured things require privacy or isolation, before they can withstand exposure to public or applause.
Learning the meaning of my right eye infection, I go on a walk to think about my projections.
That tricky calibration we can lose grip of, both by leaning too into our own voice that it clouds our clarity on what’s happening outside us, & by leaning too into other voices, that it clouds our clarity on what’s happening inside us.
I think of a lesson I’m focusing on a client about discerning between our own voice, & absorbed voices.
I infused it into this tweet about creative blocks vs nervous system responses a couple days ago… From that internal discernment, you can start catching the moments where original thought generation gets intercepted, live, before the clarity of your own voice & inner knowing, disappears. How it can help you stop believing you need more ideas, when all you really need, is to re-learn which thoughts are yours.
In tandem with what I’m helping with in my client work, I thought about the things I myself need to do that I’m dragging on. The voices I already knew I need to cut off, but haven’t. The structure I already knew I was avoiding. The actions I already knew I needed to take, as time has ticked on. & how the work & opportunities that present themselves to me, never fail to reflect what I need. How what needs confronting, always finds a way to confront me, no matter where I go. Those things keep calling on us, & grow stronger & louder the more we avoid implementing them.
It feels good as I chip away at the steps needed, confront the things I’ve needed to, & drag myself through the various complications that arise & need to be sorted as you make your way through a process. Because as I say in my sales calls, we’re just talking about getting on the starting line to doing the thing. This doesn’t happen overnight, I tell them. Delaying starting is really just delaying progress. Because if you’ve already decided you’re doing this, waiting 3 months to commit & get on the starting line, is really just 3 months of progress sacrificed. Nothing valuable happens overnight.
I get clearer with myself on where my projections become the liability. & this isn’t the first time. In perfect complement to that, I get clear with myself on where my knowing is wrongly responded to in certain contexts, like its truth is the liability. I notice the overdue necessity to stop misplacing these things.
I think of my client, moving through the same.
Spaces that treat your accuracy as the disruption. The thing that’s wrong. Because you seeing clearly, becomes what others have to manage (defend against), instead of what they want you there for.
It’s easy to lose yourself in these spaces. Lose touch with your own knowing, your own voice, your own presence. You confuse the feedback as a sign to shrink… when really, it’s a sign that space outgrew its use to you a while ago… & you’ve accommodated that (self sacrificed), for way too long. & somewhere inside of you, you know it.
So the question is: what’s keeping you there?
There’s a part of you that knows what does & doesn’t sit right with you. What is & isn’t really okay. That knows what it’s time to do, or time to stop doing. That knows what’s safe to trust, & what isn’t, no matter how it looks… & there’s a part of you that in certain kinds of spaces, starts accepting invitations to doubt your own knowing.
This “quiet” (eye roll) part of you, is probably something you’ve been ignoring for a while. Thinking you left it behind in another space of the same nature. This “quiet” part of you, that for some reason, is terrified of finding out you might already have what you need. You might already know the answers. You might already be the thing.
You can stay terrified of this part of yourself for years, to the point where you seek to outsource it to voices that only make it worse… & before you know it, you lose yourself. You miss out on the you who’s already arrived.
The original idea for this essay was diving into the tension between selling your soul for money & fame, vs selling your soul for poverty & invisibility.
But like with almost every other spectrum that makes up the human experience, I’ve explored both ends of that.
& I have criticisms of how in some spaces, everyone talks about the first one. “Don’t chase money or attention” easily mutates into low agency, or straight up avoiding (& self sabotaging yourself out of) the abundance that’s naturally attracted to you. You’re expected to make yourself smaller. They call it integrity or humility. I’m the one encouraging you to take up more space. Make more money. Stop going invisible, shrinking, underpricing yourself out of opportunity. Be grateful for what’s available because the universe isn’t on a budget & your fear isn’t a virtue.
I also have criticisms in other spaces, where everyone enables. Everyone is racing to the peaks, in anxious protection of what’s not under threat, & can’t find satisfaction, gratitude or meaning in the “valleys”. All the life that happens between the peaks. In the slow days. In the rest. On the floors where you’re put on your ass for a lesson you might miss, that’s needed for the next peak. Where urgency is a lame substitute for purpose, connection & meaning.
Depending on where I am, I’m responding to whichever bypass is happening.
You can sell your soul in either direction. The cost looks different, depending on where you’re standing. Whatever you’re in opposition to gets mocked, & the rewards are only given where you are. But it’s the same trade.
It doesn’t generate. It doesn’t integrate. It keeps you surviving off the extreme polarization of two “enemies” that could be co-creating abundance instead. & to be honest, it’s never not exhausting to notice I’m always there as the opposite of wherever the space is leaning.
Even though I spend all my time in the polarity of whatever that spaces needs to integrate, even though I’m passionate about it, & love it, & it’s my contribution, & I will probably never not notice what the space needs… I think what I crave more than anything, is a place where I do not have to be that. Space where I can just Be.
For souls who can dance in that tension between poles with me. Who know when they’re drifting, & don’t pretend the bypass or lack of presence, is the true integration or the generation of something that otherwise wouldn’t get created & savored here.
Pendulum swinging from one extreme to the other is just keeping two ways to sell your soul on rotation, picking up the customs of each side as you swing through.
Real integration is uncomfy in both directions.
You find a way to thrive while accepting rejection from both ends. Less obsessive pursuit than the people selling out for power. More agency, visibility & push than people selling out for the freedom to be vulnerably human. Too liberated for the ones in control, & too in the control for the ones liberated.
You learn to dance in that tension where neither side is fully resolved, because this is actually the most fulfilling space to live from. Life is full of chemistry. Your aliveness calls in things from all around.
So it’s funny, because people nuking the tension between poles are also sacrificing the magic. They’ll envy the magnetism of someone who makes conscious trade offs between individuality & collaboration. Holding the tension between time invested between health, wealth & relationships, areas that are always tugging on each other.
From every side, they’ll wonder how you can be so grateful, lively & fulfilled… seizing less or surrendering more… than they think you “should” be.
Whichever is harder for you, is the work.
But don’t be fooled into fantasies.
Because what no one warns you, is that even when you’re in the right place, thriving in that tension… All of it’s harder for you. Not just one end. It’s why you feel most alive here… Quality of life is a life overflowing with the chemistry of joie de vivre in any condition... But it’s the rare one who lives in this tension free of fantasies. & no one tells you, you can feel alive here all alone.
Loneliness is not a physical state of being. It’s a state of disconnect. You can be deeply connected with yourself here, while feeling disconnected from others because it’s a rare soul who can connect with you in the space in between. It’s the unreasonable one. It’s the more challenging space. It’s the most fulfilling. It’s where you seem to have the most “luck”. But the magic of living in this space, comes with its own burden.
It’s the least crowded where it’s the most fulfilling…
It’s a strange, contradicting reality, but what you’re really reaching when you live here, is the most worthwhile, most meaningful, most fulfilling place to be lonely.
“True individualists are always at odds with the universe.
Set adrift by their peculiar tastes & interests, they spend their lives searching for kindred spirits & a compatible mate. They are hopelessly out of step with the business world & its trivial urgencies. Their priorities are not the priorities of their neighbors. They are unique; therefore they are alone.”
~ Rick Bayan
I’ve been toying with a new structure for what I call, a Self Translation Session.
& after I tested it on another, I used the instrument on myself.
& as I do this, I feel called to discern between absorbed voices & my own, again.
I hear myself in a voice note, echo something I’ve advised countless times before...
We don’t get the luxury of just learning something, & life never testing us on it again… This isn’t school. Life asks us, almost like a random bag check but for our karmic curriculum, are we still embodying the material?… It’s not new information. It’s not something we don’t know. & we can intercept being a clear channel when we rush to defend against that.
“I already know this,” the intellect says.
More often, it’s what needs to be re-brought to the forefront of your consciousness.
We all “know”. & helping other people discern that internal knowing from the absorbed voices we encounter all the time, online & in our offline lives, isn’t just some smug place we get to land, like some clean & tidy, marketable before-&-after snapshot. Like how I’ve mocked the implication of the term “mastered” or “awakened”.
As if before you were a student, & now you’re a master.
Or before you were asleep, & now you’re awake.
As with all things, it’s an ongoing, never-ending practice.
When you’re in clear states where you have that discernment, you just navigate that tension between different ways you’re called to sell your soul better. When you don’t, you just borrow your script from whoever’s telling (selling) you it.
It’s those small, important little truths that are so clear. So obvious. So around us all the time, every day… that we become “fish in water”… & consciousness is about the never-ending process of reminding ourselves: This is water. This is water.
(Homage DFW)
If you’re one of the readers who notices this essay sounds more like me again…
Hey stranger.
I noticed my voice drifted too far into using Claude as my thinking (writing) partner. “Too far” as in I lost strong distinction between my voice, & absorbed voices.
Ironic.
But I’m back.
It’s me again.
& making that internal difference conscious again, is the only place I can extend it from.
This was like the me who leaves the room, except I hadn’t gone within.
I’d gone elsewhere.
Someone else’s voice got stuck inside. An old ghost’s.
Gotten caught up in “downloads”… that, instead of messages to examine, became confused with my own internal guidance system. The thing I help others calibrate.
But I can’t extend a clear channel, when I’m not Being one. None of us can.
& you can feel the difference, can’t you?
When the voice you’re hearing is coming from something real, alive & true, you feel it in your bones. Someone who’s truly living it vs the “knowledge” that comes from a prompting machine. Or from other voices being programmed in. Even when the structure or points overlap, it feels different. You feel the presence in the words, & in the silence. It’s this weird little specificity that doesn’t justify itself, with loose ends that don’t need to sand themselves off.
That difference is mattering more & more.
We’re in a time where most of the meaning in front of you didn’t come from the soul of a human experience. & a lot of the writing/thinking that did come from a person was so heavily AI-laundered on the way to you, the energy & life in it got neutered.
That lifeless smoothness is being force multiplied everywhere.
& the people who can still use their own true voice (friction, loose ends, weird specificity, contradictions & all) are going to be the only ones who make you feel something that sits right with you, when you listen to them.
That trust in your own voice feels right when you find your way back to it.
Not right, as in “correct”… but right, as in true. Aligned.
Like a guitar strum that hit the right note.
There’s never been a more important, high stakes time to avoid losing touch with that.
Another subtle chapter of losing myself to the noise, is over.
It’s good to be back in the room with you.
I hope you’ll join me here.
(Be on the lookout for a real opportunity to be in the room with me, coming soon.)