This is Week Two | Brooklyn, I’m Trying.

Liz Norment — Wed, 07 Jun 2017 20:35:11 +0000

a weekly journal of my new freelance life.

they should teach more about personal finance in school. they should warn you about the dangers of credit cards in this country instead of encouraging them, nearly forcing them down your throat when you’re at your most financially vulnerable, requiring them for all the the major steps of your life… at which point they will simply serve as flagrant signs of your requisite irresponsibility. they should tell you to budget.

but then, maybe they did. maybe i just didn’t listen. and maybe i’m still confident that every dollar of debt that i have accumulated has been part of an experience, traveling, dining, learning, growing.

and, ok, more than a few times buying food for number one (the cat. obviously).

i’m in a financial crisis. i saved up no money before i quit my job, and well… let’s just say i left myself in a not-so-comfortable situation. however, if i’d waited for that comfort, i would have never left the job. i often subscribe to the push-the-bird-out-of-the-nest method, and this nest was not in the money tree.

i’m kind of thinking it was a cork tree, given where a lot of my monies go.

i had that all-too familiar feeling today, the one where you feel like you are truly at the very end of your rope and then somehow the rope extends and you end up deeper and even more helpless than you were when you thought you were at the end.

this feeling brought me back to a particular moment when i was living in madrid. a moment when everything came crashing down. i was dead broke, and more heartbroken then i had ever been at the time. i was lost, emotionally. and at least a bit turned around physically. i sat down on the curb by myself and tried to get a grip. i sat and stared up at a streetlight. i took a deep breath, then quite a few more. i decided at that moment that i had a choice. there was absolutely no clear answer, no obvious path. no way out. and i realized that there wasn’t going to be, but i had to keep going. somehow, something would get figured out. there would be an answer. there would, right streetlight? i implored. right??

it reminded me of one of my favorite songs, a recreation of augustin lara’s farolito sung by natalia lafourcade. farolito, a song sung to a streetlight, that ignited and illuminated the same desperation i felt.

farolito, que alumbra apenas la calle desierata

cuantas noches me has visto, llorando, llamar a su puerta?

sin llevarme mas que una cancion, un pedazo de mi corazon?

little street lamp, barely lighting up this deserted street,

how many nights have you seen me weeping, calling at her door

without wanting to bring her more than a song, than a piece of my heart?

it represents the calming presence of the light when all that is felt is misery and despair, perhaps so deep that the singer doesn’t even realize.

how many nights have you seen me?

the farolito is a light, and also a beacon, providing a sense of vision and balance. a hope on a deserted street and in an empty heart where there seems to be none at all.

streetlights in new york often feel like a beacon, of safety and security, and perhaps of companionship on deserted streets or those that are overcrowded, where we find ourselves surrounded, yet alone.

the street i just moved on to in brooklyn is completey shrowded by a thick canopy of trees that are so charming during the day, but they block out all light from the farolitos at night, and have forced me to take notice and memorize the location of the most forboding potholes during the day, so that at night i can safely navigate my way home without compromising the wheels on my beloved 1960s schwinn.

so this, this is week 2. equal parts desperate and seeking a beacon of hope, a sense of calm, an inhale, an answer. or at least a steady presence to ask.

and also knowing that i need to have confidence in what i’ve learned during times of doubt, blindness, uncertainty so far to guide me through this dark and innavigable path.

This Is Week One.

Liz Norment — Sun, 28 May 2017 15:56:43 +0000

A JOURNAL.

i have become my own experiment. here i chronicle the weeks and how i will navigate this new life, in the most honest way possible.

I read a quote recently that said “anywhere can be a prison if you make it one” and the honesty of those words pissed me off but also stuck with me. so often we create boundaries, walls, gates, limitations, in so many areas of our lives. we do this emotionally, professionally, creatively. we are capable of so somuch more than we allow ourselves to be. anytime I doubt that I watch this and feel alive and invigorated and deliberate and afraid of nothing.

last week I quit my job. I found myself on my first day of “freedom” feeling completely unhinged, trying not to panic. I tried to write but the words wouldn’t come. I tried to workoutbut it didn’t feel productive enough. I wrote a to-do list and accomplished nothing on it but “buy TP”. I found myself at the grocery store standing on the meat aisle, thinking that we need different meats. none of these felt right. there must be others? have we thought of others?? i just stood there, ironically paralyzed among the once living and now sterilely packaged products, not knowing what to do next.

the very freedom I’d been craving became debilitating, and I found myself somehow imprisoned again, by fear.
with all of the preachy “follow your dreams!” “live your best life!” posts that i shove down your throats, I have finally followed my own advice. I am now my own experiment. so stick with me and follow along, I guarantee this will get interesting.

Brooklyn, I’m trying…
to break free of these walls
to live without fear
to be so much more.

week one

felt weak. My first day on my own I expected the energy I had and felt and embodied the days I’d lied about being sick, running around with a rambunctious fever, feeling and seeing and doing ferociously. instead i found myself in a rare hungover state, standing immobile on the meet aisle, wondering why we hadn’t come up with different meats by now. none of these met my expectations or could even meet me where I was, directionless and hungry.

I was unhinged.

I stopped making to-do lists that only made me feel incompetent and unnacomplished

I realized I was breaking habits and staryijng new ones.

I gave myself a break.

I slept more.

I prioritized meditation.

I made my space better and more inspiring but left when I found myself allowing organization to bleed into satisfaction.

I left the house.

I came back and cleaned the backyard.

I planted herbs.

I unpacked boxes.

I did my laundry, I spoke Spanish with everyone in the laundromat.

I threw myself into the family in the laundromat.

I came out displaced and rinsed clean.

I inhaled. I slowed down.

i went to the doctor’s office on my last day of insurance. under “occupation // employer” i started writing “digital strategist // justin alexander” but i’m not. i scratched through it and started to write “bartender…” but that is not me either. i drew a line through it and proudly wrote “writer // self-employed.” wiht a strong period at the end. i stared at it. that’s what i am, that’s why i’m here. i walked my papers up to the desk and sat back down, satisfied and swimming in the — that permission gives you when i was called back up. “ma’am, your position and employer don’t match what we have on file with your insurance.”

sonofabitch.

i was told i’m healthy and don’t look close to 30, which means that 30 is old.

i recognized that my time is my own, ever single minute.

i stopped working at the wine bar and was accepted beautifully and unexpectedly into a restaurant family that will become my own.

i accepted a tequila shot in celebration of my first shift.

i felt warm.

I’ve been drinking less because a day of incompetence is now unacceptable.

I’m deliberate.

I’m deliberate and afraid of nothing.

And this is week one.

Brooklyn, I'm Trying

This is Week Two | Brooklyn, I’m Trying.

a weekly journal of my new freelance life.

This Is Week One.

<3L.