What I found though is that making myself understandable all the time diluted the joy that lies instead in specificity — in concisely crafting a life that only needs to make sense to me.
Allowing yourself to be misunderstood teaches you who values you for your personhood alone and how much you actually need from other people to feel sufficiently... See more
Being a woman in a male-dominated industry has made me very aware that this culture is sorely lacking something I am naturally able to provide in spades. Not in a way that saps me of energy or makes me feel like a martyr, but in a way that feels fulfilling and grounding in my sense of self.
There is a divine nature inherent to labor. The key to finding professional success and happiness is in seeking that sacred thing. Some people find that the divine comes from only devoting their labor to missions they care about. For me, I’ve found something spiritual in delighting in the minutia of my work.
When you step into the Moat of Low Status, you also step away from the grinding of normalcy. On your first day of dance class, you don’t know how to move your body. Isn’t that exciting? You don’t know how to move your body. This thing you’ve been lugging around is now a whole new vehicle — it might move like a frenzied wolverine, or an indifferent... See more