On a rainy Monday in Vancouver, my friend Lee and I are stomping between clothing stores that only one of us can afford. Pieces hang on racks like paintings in a gallery. They’re the kind you stop to admire the weight, or lightness of, depending. I try to enjoy window shopping and think I do. I remind myself that witnessing a beautiful thing is plenty, the need to possess it would only be greedy.
Our words match the speed of our steps. My sentences rush into his, “Yes… And! Wait! No exactly. So tell me… Completely.” Because we didn’t meet until our twenties, we’ve gotten to know each other only by the stories we’ve chosen to tell. On a beach in February I learned how his brother had gotten sick. Sat in a crowded restaurant he found out the number of years it’d been since I’d spoken to my sister: six. During the intermission of a Broadway show I found out about the musical he debuted in a historic London theatre. I collect his stories like sea glass and make a mosaic in my brain for why he became who he did, one of my favourite people on earth.
I hear him tell me something about the creative process: “Yeah, you know… Do it, to see it, to do it”, advice from a past design director. You need to get your idea out, lose the preciousness, and see what you have to work with.
I worked as an engineer and found it monotonous, but used the parts I enjoyed to shape what fulfilling work could look like. I published 108 YouTube videos to know I have no interest in a personal brand. I shopped in Soho boutiques to realize I have more fun treasure hunting vintage. After a decade of avoiding exercise, I trained for a triathlon to find out movement makes me feel beautiful. All of this is what I mean by “Try Stuff Energy”, the courage to write a first draft.
My partner believes letting your worst case scenario play out removes its power. In his early twenties, alone in Australia and having just lost his wallet and cash, he challenged himself to go without it for as long as possible. He lived in a tent in a stranger’s backyard. He asked strangers eating in public places if he could finish their meal. He describes that time as deeply freeing. He was happy.
At the end of last year I walked away from a salary so high it makes me sick to think about. I tried for weeks to reason with myself that it would be a good idea to take the job, but I knew it wasn’t. I turned it down believing another opportunity would be right around the corner. Instead, around the corner was the worst recession in 70 years. I’m still unemployed. If I’m honest, the time off has been healing. I finished a design course, I’m rehabbing an injury I’ve ignored, I’ve had breakthroughs in therapy. But I’ve burned through my savings, I need a part time job to cover living expenses. With this realization came its resistance: am I a failure if I need to work a minimum wage job? Would I judge a friend like this?
When Cate Blanchett’s character Jasmine in Woody Allen’s Blue Jasmine has to work retail after her husband is convicted for defrauding his clients, she recounts waiting on the friends she once hosted for extravagant parties in horror. Watching, I laugh to myself at the ridiculousness of her, of me. You’re taking yourself so seriously, Caitlin. We think we have a thousand serious moves.
What is the difference
Between your experience of Existence
And that of a saint?
The saint knows
That the spiritual path
Is a sublime chess game with God
And that the Beloved
Has just made such a Fantastic Move
That the saint is now continually
Tripping over Joy
And bursting out in Laughter
And saying, “I Surrender!”
Whereas, my dear,
I am afraid you still think
You have a thousand serious moves.”-Hafez
And so off I go to apply to Whole Foods to earn a bit of money. I’ll laugh to myself thinking of the tombstone: “Here lies Caitlin: needed to work a part time job for a brief moment in time. Thought her world was ending.”
Lying on my back on top of a treatment table, my physiotherapist’s right pointer and middle finger are layered on top of her left pointer and middle finger, the way you give a baby CPR. Except instead of that, she’s driven them deeply into my psoas muscle, one inch to the left of my right hip bone. Hot red pain shoots through my lower body. I want to push her off, but breath slowly. I choose to trust her. I submit to my reality. Slowly, the tension releases and the pain dissipates.
I’m learning that life is a wave I can catch or fight, and I don’t have the energy to fight.
Hi Caitlin,
Thank you as always for being so open about your journey. I am about to finish engineering degree at 27 and starting late makes me feel left behind lately. Still unsure on where life will take me. Your writings are gift to this world, they never fail to bring me a sense of hope. I've been following your journey since subscribing to your Youtube channel which I miss greatly!
Please continue to write & I am sending you all my love and good jujus xx