Progress is Not Linear

These past couple of weeks have been really hard for me. The hardest I can remember since perhaps this time last year, when I was just gearing up to leave the sad attic apartment and move into my current apartment – an Upper West Side-esque historic charmer. As I penned on a Post-It recently: “Progress is not linear.”

In so many ways, I have done what I set out to do: Create a vibrant and creative life in Washington DC filled with deep human connection, art, and spreading positive vibes. I’m so proud of myself for my apartment – which is such a reflection of me, the life I’ve lived and the things I value – and for all the new friendships I’ve made, old ones I’ve fostered, new groups I’ve brought together, people I’ve connected to each other.

So as much as I’m confident in what I’m creating, and let’s not forget the word – REGENESIS – that I saw on my recent yoga retreat there’s also the reality of, well, money. I’m just like a Jane Austen character in that marriage provided me relative financial security. In my 20s in DC, I lived slightly outside the means afforded by my reporter’s salary and when I met my diplomat would-be husband, who came quite a few rungs up from me on the socioeconomic ladder, well, life became easier for me, financially. We moved country to country, having our housing paid for, me often working at the U.S. Embassy as well. I felt rich. Living in spacious houses, being guests of honor at fancy diplomatic parties, and traveling in style helped. When said diplomat husband abruptly ended our life together in the summer of 2023, I knew immediately my whole world had changed. I thought that two years out from that, I’d be on more secure footing.

But progress is not linear.

My interior design business, Next Dinner Party Designs – a passion project that I made real in 2023 – suddenly held a much greater importance with the diplomatic life gone. Could I make money off this new business? The answer was yes, sort of. From year one to two, I increased my profits by 150% percent. I’ve spent the past two years learning all I can about this business by going to trade shows, networking, teaching myself a 3D design program, asking countless other designers for advice, tinkering with my business model, and working with several dozen clients around the world. Ever since Trump was inaugurated, my pipeline of clients went poof. DC is totally in turmoil right now, making hiring an interior designer a ridiculous proposition for most, and the same is true of my other client source: Americans living abroad looking to add some personality to their bland government digs. I’ve also applied for writing jobs, for State Department jobs, for interior design jobs with firms. A lot of those jobs seems to no longer be hiring. Hello, recession.

I recently had a phone call with one of my Aunts Patty. (Fun fact: Both my mom and my dad have sisters named Patricia, which is also my middle name. Additional fun fact: both Patricias married men with the same name and both named their first child the same name!). I told my Aunt Patti about how scary this time is: the political state of America; all my friends being laid off or unsure of their job security or having lay off their staff; the Black Lives Matter road in front of the White House being ripped right out; any mention of Black soldiers being erased from Arlington National Cemetery’s database; people with every right to be in America being taken off the street and sent who knows there; USAID being callously eliminated and how much many of my friends are suffering. And how despite all this, I’m actually happy (albeit anxious) and I’m living my best life in a lot of ways, but also I’ve shed more tears these past few weeks than I have in at least a year (Ah! What a delicious dichotomy life can be sometimes). Aunt Patti told me she’s always admired what a risk taker I am. Right after graduating from Western Michigan University, I moved to DC, which was not something anyone I know did, and then six years later, I moved away from DC and my job as a reporter and all my friends and my cute apartment to follow the man I loved to Yemen.

And those do sound like risks, but I have to admit they didn’t feel so much like risks then because I really believed in what I was doing. I was so certain, after a few weeks of my internship in DC having stimulating conversations with the smartest people I’d ever encountered, that it was the place for me. And while I at first wasn’t certain about leaving my journalism career behind to follow a man on a thrilling adventure (especially because I hadn’t ever even pictured myself married) I actually had a series of dreams that went from me fighting against a fast-rushing river to eventually me happily ensconced in an inner tube going easily with the flow of the river that made me certain I needed to just go where that river took me. I now believe there are no “right” choices, just choices, but I can say with utter conviction: I have no regrets.

At a wedding last week, I met the founder of trendy fast-casual restaurant that in the past decade has opened locations all over DC. I asked him what advice he’d give to an entrepreneur who’s feeling that moment of “Should I even be doing this?” He said something his mentor told him is “Life rewards risk takers.”

A very wise friend (it’s Babette, whom I have a cosmic connection with) quoted Churchill to me and said “Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.” There were a few points in recent times where I thought of all my failures and my enthusiasm was diminished. But always, always, something happened to make me regain it, to shift my perspective. Like the random woman at the bar the other day who turned to me and said “Can I just say, I love your energy?” Brought tears to my eyes. (See! I’ve cried so fucking much recently).

One major thing that strengthened my enthusiasm was seeing my friend’s production of Hadestown. This friend is a high school drama teacher but that’s an understatement of what this man does. He pours his blood, sweat, and tears into working outrageously long hours to put on high school productions that are more akin to professional productions, literally changing the course of life for the teenagers who are a part of these shows. So his most recent show was last week and I’d seen Hadestown before and thought it was fine, but this production bowled me over, for the talent of these kids and for the talent of my friend who’d managed to make the show’s message about perseverance so prescient. The story is that Hades (the Greek god of the underworld) has created a system where the plebes just muddle through and keep their head down whilst now and then being told to be grateful to their overlord for protecting them. There is a chilling song called “Why We Build the Wall” which is a call and response where the workers parrot back that the “wall” Hades has built around them keeps them “free”. Along comes Orpheus who doesn’t like the way things are and tries to change them. His love, Eurydice, believes in his vision for a while but then loses faith and takes her place doing anonymous grunt work in underworld. Others also question who is Orpheus to be this agent of change, and sometimes Orpheus questions whether it’s really his place to upend the entire system. Does he really have it in him? He goes to the underworld to get Eurydice back and Hades agrees to this, on the condition that their journey back to light will be pitch dark and Orpheus will have to walk ahead and if he ever turns around to see if Eurydice is following, she’ll be thrust back to the underworld. And indeed, Orpheus does have a moment of faithlessness and turns around. And well.

Sometimes writers say: Write the thing you want to read. I must admit I’m writing this post to give myself a boost. To document all the things that have made myself feel better like my hot yoga class today in which I repeated my mantra “discomfort is growth” so much that I embodied it, sweat it out in eagle pose and sucked it back in in drinking bird pose. I wrote this to tell myself not to lose faith in my vision. And I do have a vision: For a way I want my life to look, for the energy I want to give off, for how to be vulnerable and honest in a way that invites the same in others. For being the change I want to see. And for taking risks.