#1: A Little Trip

ꔛ With Many Costumes and Characters Along The Way

A few weeks ago I remembered the blog I had in college and decided to take a peak. I logged on and realized I had 333 posts in total, including a few drafts. As I read through the old posts I was overwhelmed by how desperate and pleading my energy felt in so many of the posts.

I was trying so hard to be something, be someone. I was trying so hard to appear like I had something important to say. I don’t reflect on this as a bad thing, just as a palpable energy that’s felt even through the spanning of time.

I spent many years of my life wanting to be “seen” by others… Seen in the sense of “my” creative skills, artistic pursuits, acquired knowledge, and all-around je ne sais quois. I wanted to be “heard,” and truthfully, to be liked and lauded.

Unlike Taylor Swift who has admittedly, over and over in her lyrics, stated how she has contorted herself to manipulate the masses into loving her and making it seem effortless, I did the opposite.

When I didn’t receive the adoration and recognition I pined for without much effort on my part, I felt bitter and resentful and pushed away those that did show up for me to execute the self-fulfilling prophecy of “I’m not seen, heard, recognized, or wanted — I’m too much, too harsh, too unlikeable.”

To be clear, Taylor Swift and I are not the only humans who crave to be seen and heard by the right people: all humans desire this. And many go to lengths to fulfill this inauthentically (hello, everyone’s social media) or go to lengths to push it away and go deeper into the pain (hello, artist stereotypes).

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about performativity on social media (groundbreaking, I know) and how it’s only further highlighted and emphasized the human desire to be wanted and seen.

In the last year, I’ve seen a few very large accounts get hacked and wiped. I mean, 200k+ followers, years and years of content, and heavy information posts that really could amount to a small book. I have a lot of empathy in that regard because whoever believes having a large following is “easy” does not understand content creation and how to steward it to the masses. It ain’t easy.

That aside, I saw an account get wiped and this person was frantic but tried to play it cool. They took to their secondary account and asked people to follow them there. Understandably, this is their “business” and how they make a large part of their income (affiliate linking and course/product selling, I presume).

They attempted to play it chill as if this wasn't something they cared that much for, but energetically it was very visible to see they were frazzled and distraught. The account is prominent in the wellness space and a large part of that is living a low-stress, “low-tox” life, an identity among many that so many of us cling to.

Another large account in the wellness space was hacked and wiped recently as well. I’m on their email list so they sent an email stating the account was hacked and that while they lost hundreds and hundreds of hours of work and many thousands of followers, they were… mildly relieved?

They hated the performative action of sound bite posting to socials when they believed their work would benefit from being more long-form to be more effective and thus help more people.

They started a new account from zero, and even got their old account back after a follower was able to send an internal ticket to Meta, but stated that going forward they won’t be making any efforts to “grow” the account further and instead will focus on other mediums and projects that felt more aligned with them and their business.

I think these sort of “holy shit did I just lose everything I’ve built” moments can be a chance to go deeper into the woods. A chance to face where we are and where we want to go or are already going without much awareness. And maybe we want to go right back to posting all the things we were posting before. But maybe we can see it as a chance to look at the details of the costumes (identities) we’ve constructed, the performativity we’ve participated in, and see if that’s the timeline we feel most aligned to be on.

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When I started an online business last year I found myself back in that similar bloggy-desperate energy I had in college. In a world where social media and the internet are built for Generators, being a Projector means I really cannot do business that way…

Posting daily, doing giveaways with brands I don’t feel aligned with or even really like, posting information I don’t care to discuss, oversharing my personal life to get followers to “trust” me, always needing new products/or upscaling quickly to meet demands, etc. And in doing so, it can come off a bit repelling and inauthentic… especially to me.

So as I forged deeper into the woods, the questions kept appearing…

Who are you without your followers? Who are you without that business? Who are you with zero likes?

Who are you when no one is watching? Who are you without posting that? Who are you without an identity (costume) to cling to? (Mother, partner, wife, writer, wise one, CEO, spiritual, successful, homemaker, religious, good person, wealthy, sick, healer, hard worker, disciplined, conscious, woke, well-liked, are all identities/costumes we mask and hide behind.)

I didn’t get a straight answer, but I did realize that when we live without receptivity to the constant communication of our body and our own energy field (such as leaking energy all over the place, letting people vampire our energy or hook themselves into us, exhausting our energy on things that aren’t ours to hold, trapped in trauma loops, etc.) we end up on expired or distorted paths that leave us feeling even more depleted and off balance.

So, who are you if you took the costume off?

And don’t worry — we will put the costumes back on. Because 1.) the costumes are fun. 2.) The costumes are a big part of why we came here: to experience ego and identity.

But for a moment… who are you if you took the costume off?

Our inner state will always reflect our outer one and vice versa. That much is inescapable in this dream we call “reality.”

When we settle into the nothingness of being, the costumes and identities become more fun to put on.

They become an experience and experiment to play with and enjoy. Once we start identifying with the costumes, and the false desires that come right along with them, we’ve overridden our true essence that always, and only, speaks in small whispers guiding us along the path and into the light.

With remembrance,

Tracy