Hi👋🏽 I’m Kat. I help navigate difficult conversations and teach women how to negotiate on their own terms. Welcome to my version of a newsletter where I’ll be reminding you how to be kinder to yourself. You may listen (above) or read (below). You’re doing great, sweetie. Remember you’re all you have. So welcome and thanks for being here.✨
I miss large crowds, small talk networking, intimate hot yoga classes, endless brunches, public binge-drinking, impromptu traveling and dancing in dark bars with strangers with reckless abandon. I miss all that and the lifestyle that I have had the privilege to fashion out of selfish pursuits full of passion, pleasure and freedom. I have four wedding invitations this year. More if I’m predicting elopement for some and perhaps a few more underway. And as much I look forward to these celebrations and renewing my old life, the lingering social anxiety, proudly sponsored by the pandemic, is not something that can easily be evaded.
As some parts of the world slowly creeps out of the shadows and restrictions easing up in New York, I still very much have that same level of concern as I have since this all began. Call me paranoid but having lived through the first epicenter of the crises, witnessing the temporary morgues and makeshift hospital tents in Central Park as death tolls rose are images that are seared into my memory. It still feels too fresh. And it makes it only more panic-inducing when I think about all the acquaintances I have known and still have not heard from since 2020. Is my favorite barista still around? How about my reliable bartender? Is that hot guy whom I once purported to be my soulmate after one dance even still alive? There’s a bit of dark twisted humor to think if this question would have crossed the minds of anyone who’s been ghosted in the past year. But the sad truth is that I haven’t accounted for everyone I know. And I may never really get to it since so much has changed. Most of us have uprooted from old lives and morphed into something more post-pandemic sustainable.
Earlier last year, six months into 2020 I, like a lot of people explored all the creative avenues to keep my sanity in check. I have added projects on top of passion projects in my already growing list of tasks. One of which was this newsletter. I was among the obnoxious overachievers who fell in the camp of “now I have all the time to write a novel.” That obviously didn’t last long. So instead, I ended up steering myself toward something that felt more tangible. Like applying for a PhD program, which by the way, was a also complete bust.
But during my PhD test prep (because the American education system is outrageously ridiculous like that for requiring test scores) I suddenly found myself becoming very well acquainted with the concept of the unknown, which we all scholars famously, scientifically call as ‘X’. As I was re-learning linear equations (honestly, did I ever really learn it the first time around) I realized that we humans will forever be in search of Xs. If there is any skill to master these days, it’s making Xs your friend (and I don’t mean the ones who cheated on you) because that unknown remains ubiquitous in our existence: yesterday, today and forever.
That unknown often comes with potential threats or things to fear. While some fears are more legitimate than others, fear is still fear. It’s that raw emotion that tiptoes just around the brink of our human frailty. Fear can either challenge us to greater heights or plummet us into our dark demise. And this pandemic brings all that uncertainty at the forefront of our reality.
Perhaps one of the biggest challenges in life is our own mindset. When we think about the unknown, it can result in one of two general ways: a good outcome or a bad outcome. So it’s possible to lean in towards expecting a good outcome rather than obsessing the chance of things to go terrible since we won’t know until that moment arrives anyway. So why waste our days succumbing to the fear of uncertainty when that is all that is: fear. It’s simply the elusive X. A concept that we get to define to ease our existence while living within our ambiguous reality.
As long as we live and breathe, unknown is constant. And frankly, like most of the algebraic expressions on my practice tests, I will never know the damn value of X and that’s okay. Math was never my strongest skill anyway. The only thing to do is to keep pushing onward and forward making smart and informed assumptions based on the multiple choices available at any given moment. We may not have the answers but a choice must still be made. And for anyone who has taken a standardized test, inaction or non-selection is still a choice. As Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard is noted for this sentiment says: “Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.” Perhaps this means that in the depths of this human crisis, we must learn to sit and trust that the unknown will lead us to the right experience, because sometimes it’s all we can do.
No matter what happens, life goes on and, if 2020 taught us anything, too short to allow Xs (and for some, exes) dictate lives. I am not sure what the future brings, and I am way past solving for X but I will be at all my friends’ weddings this year. Of course while following the proper social mandates and protocols. I don’t know about you, but despite any Xs there’s still so much to live for and look forward to including aiming to live a life fashioned out of selfish pursuits full of passion, pleasure and freedom.
So here’s to living openly and readily despite all your Xs. And mine.
xx
Kat✨
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