I'm moving to India. Here's how it happened.
I have a theory that my love affair with India was destined from the moment I stepped into my first dance class when I was 5 years old, but that's for another post. We'll begin with a more recent event... A year ago, my good friend Alex and I -- in collaboration with an established, award-winning production company -- launched a $100,000 Kickstarter campaign to attempt to raise money for an ambitious web series project. The would-be scripted series was to be the primary engagement tool for a larger social action campaign around encouraging teens and twenty-something women to consider careers in business, technology and other traditionally "male dominated" fields. (In retrospect, I feel like it's more appropriate to say "fields dominated by masculine energies," but more on that later). The result? We raised $10,000. Cringe.
Oh, the mistakes were plenty. The most obvious being the bright idea to raise $100,000 on an all-or-nothing crowd funding platform without much to show for ourselves. Does it even cost that much to produce a pilot -- or even a short episode? Not really. But Alex and I were more-or-less clueless about production costs. And the production company wanted to do something bold -- something that paralleled the lessons on passion-based risk taking we were weaving into the content itself. I respect that, and I was completely on board. I am also incredibly grateful for the risk they took on Alex and me. We were both just 1.5 years out of undergrad journalism school with a helluva lot of determination and a good deal of intrinsic wisdom and know-how, but very little professional experience.
Regardless of what went wrong and why, the failure was crushing -- but not quite as crushing as the hostile blog post that Sam Biddle, Gawker's resident gossip hound for the tech industry, wrote about me two months prior. (I won't link to it, as I prefer to encourage my friends to read more, uh, positive blogs. But if you're curious, by all means... a quick Google search should do the trick).
The project was ripped to shreds, and I was painted like a PR bimbo. I remember staring at the computer screen in disbelief, tears streaming down my face, heart sinking lower with every sarcastic Biddle-y phrase and with every disparaging comment or tweet. My first entrepreneurial pursuit had been displayed for thousands of Valleywag readers (of whom many are colleagues and business contacts) to throw tomatoes at. I kept hearing that I should feel flattered that I even got his attention, but I just felt professionally and personally violated. For a 23-year-old just starting to make a name for herself there is definitely such a thing as bad publicity.
Based on a vague email I'd sent to a select number of women, he made infuriating assumptions about the project and spun a reputation-tarnishing jab fest at my character, without an inkling of insight into my intentions or plans for the series. Yes, that's his job (and let me just say, I do not envy any writer on the talk-shit beat -- what an energetically toxic way to make a living). This post was just another tool to bring in page views. It was nothing personal. But to me it was. I knew it would end up coloring a lot of people's perceptions of the project and of me personally. I was mortified. And that's why a year later I'm feeling immense gratitude for this wildly unpopular man.
Seriously. Thank you, Sam. You provided me with my first moment of truly public humiliation -- a moment I've learned is an invaluable gem on one's journey.
There was nothing else to do but open that moment wide and fully immerse myself in it. I fully felt it and explored it. What I found were insecurities and a need for social validation. And, of course, the infamous ego. My ego had taken my inner light captive, holding it far away from anything I didn't want to accept about myself and instead shining it on career aspirations and glorified visions of "being impactful." And as a result, the rejected darkness got even darker. It stayed out of sight and out of mind until the ego received a hard enough beating that the walls it had built to block out my dark side came tumbling down with it, and I was finally forced to stand directly in the center of my darkness. And being me, I couldn't just stand still -- I had to dance in it.
As difficult as it was to peel myself out of the comfort of victimization, I made a decision to see the experience as a rather unique opportunity to wrap myself in myself -- to feel my own love and expansion. And I began a process of transforming what I was perceiving as humiliation into a deeper awareness of my insecurities and society-fueled desires.
So, when the project officially failed two months later, I called up my heart, and she told me to get the fuck out. To be clear, I had already been planning a 3-month trip to New Zealand, India and Thailand with full intentions of working while abroad or at least picking up where I left off immediately upon my return. But now I was emotionally raw and completely unattached.
So I quit my awesome and trendy PR agency job where I had effectively sculpted all of my inherent PR-y-ness into professional-level skills; I made a conscious decision to shut out the world of CEOs and networking events, and I deleted my draft pitches for the 40-under-40-Everyone-in-Tech-is-Hot-and-Young-and-Smart lists. I said goodbye to steady paychecks, and I got on a plane fully aware that I would likely be missing my return flight.
And what happened from there is indescribable, really. I was tossed into a flow of being and living I never knew existed. And I'm not sure I would've found it had it not been for the Emotional Crash of 2014.
And after five months, four countries, hundreds of hours on a yoga mat, dozens of new connections, nights dancing on the sand and swimming under the stars, and one magic (I swear) beach, I landed back on Earth in March 2014 -- and hard. I was caught between a swirl of emotions and the reality of building a freelance business. My physical body was back in NY, but most of me was still dancing on a beach in Thailand with shirtless yogis. After I shook the last of the glitter out of my hair, the lessons of the last year began to bubble to the surface.
The most profound thing I learned while I was frolicking through Asia, was that it was time to stop frolicking through Asia. I needed to find a way to integrate these newly-uncovered tools of introspection, self-awareness and love (so much love!) into all aspects of my worldly life -- namely, my professional life. And as the Universe would have it, I quickly found myself in the midst of an incredible career opportunity smack dab in the middle of the one country I most associated with my spirituality. Boom. Back to India. How's that for integration?
I'm still sitting -- sometimes patiently, sometimes not so patiently -- in the lessons of the last year. And I'm also dancing and talking and crying and laughing in those lessons. I'm reflecting on how my ideas for empowering women (and men, for that matter) have evolved in the last 12 months, while feeling grateful and proud of my fearless work and determination of a year ago -- even if it wasn't quite the right time or format.
Somehow, in the midst of one of the most quickly-evolving years of my life, I found a flow. And with so much gratitude, I'm learning how to truly glow with every ~*WOOSH*~ of life that flow brings along. I'm glowing all the way back to the beautifully organized chaos that is INDIA.
Here's to *glowing* in our own special way.
gummygunk
gamechangershow
dailybridgerton
2087
vaporwave
titsay
s-u-f-j-a-n-s-t-e-v-e-n-s
origamiaround