#8: Journeying to the spiral's centre

Plus early Islam's queer astrologers, the case for a Universal Creative Income, regenerative org design

May 09, 2021

Thinking

I spent 1st May, Beltane, in Devon, by the coast. My seasonal living book says: “Beltane energy is one of reverence for all of life. Reach out for what it is you want. Everything is possible”. To celebrate Beltane, the book told me to hang ribbons on trees, sleep outside overnight, wash my face in the morning dew and leap over a fire with a lover. I… did not do any of these things. But, following one of the book’s instructions, I did carve a spiral into the sand and walked its grooves: “let go of old restraints as you walk to the centre. At the centre, ask a question, seek your direction and bring this new insight out with you”.

On my journey to the centre of the spiral, I let go of the two limiting beliefs that have held me back in designing the life I want.

Limiting belief 1: career success means a permanent job

“I thought you’d be more successful when you went freelance”.

Wounding words from a wounded person, spoken a year after I left my consulting job to go freelance, in large part because I wanted to find a more sustainable way to work alongside my chronic illness. I had felt like a reasonably successful freelancer until this conversation. I was taking time off to recover from a fatigue crash, but prior to that, in my first year of freelancing, I had worked with brilliant people on interesting projects (one of which put me in a book). But, as anyone who’s taken extended time off from work due to illness or caring responsibilities knows, your confidence quickly drains away, lowering your defenses and exposing your tender shame centre, a gaping target for the judgments of others.

I never knew what “success” meant to the wounded person. I just knew that I wasn’t it, and I wasn’t it because I wasn’t good at freelancing. So, I decided to aim for permanent employment again, as soon as I was “better”. Freelancing became a stop-gap, a stepping stone to the more impressive things that were surely in my future.

Limiting belief 2: I’m going to get better soon

“You’re going to make a full recovery, as long as you don’t think of yourself as ill”

A doctor told me this in 2018, when I’d been ill for 2.5 years. As time went on, and I “failed” to recover, I blamed myself. Maybe I wasn’t trying hard enough, or I didn’t have the right mindset? Recently, I learned from other people with ME/CFS that “you’ll recover” is a common tactic employed by health professionals. They think that our illness is psychological (read more here), so it follows that, if they make us think we’ll recover, we’ll get better through sheer positive belief. It’s hard to think of another major disabling condition where the mainstream medical treatment is “heal yourself with the power of your mind”, or where the physician-patient relationship is predicated on paternalistic untruths.

I came to believe that, despite how long I’d been ill, despite the lack of treatments and research funding, that I would magically get better, and it would be soon. I just needed to keep trying. I’d be back to lifting weights before I knew it. This sick body was just a momentary blip in what would otherwise be a life of good health.

Letting go

Holding onto these two beliefs meant that I never invested in any freelancing infrastructure. I believed my recovery to be imminent and an impressive job in an impressive institution would follow soon after.

Earlier this year, I made a journey map from when I became ill six years ago, to the present. There it was, on paper, so clear to me. I run on an 18-month cycle of short-term energy crash followed by a slow return to baseline. Rinse and repeat. For someone who’s into seasonal living, this makes sense to me. Our bodies contain many cycles: diurnal, monthly, our physical and emotional interactions with nature’s seasonal cycles. Why not an 18-month energy cycle?

It is such a relief to let go of that doctor’s lie and accept my reality. I will never stop trying to feel better, inch by grasping inch, but I now relish the chance to design a good life for myself as a disabled person. My body is not a blip. I don’t need to wait to be healthy, and I don’t need to wait to become someone else’s version of success. I can have good things now.

Freelancing works beautifully with my cycles, enabling me to work part-time. I am converting the stop-gap into solid foundations. I have freelancing infrastructure now: a website in development, a great accountant, a decent stack and essential social infrastructure too, in the form of supportive freelancing communities.

Now, success to me means resiliently adapting to life’s seasons. Being someone who can hunker down through the harsh winters and really fucking enjoy making hay while the sun shines. Success is working enough to be able to do the things I want, while creating space for resting and dreaming. These are the generative ways of being that bring me good ideas and the energy to reach out for everything that is possible.

Tell me, what are you letting go of, what are you reaching out for, what is the question at the centre of your spiral?

Reading + watching

Aftershocks: Dispatches from the Frontlines of Identity. An absolutely stunning exploration of family, place and belonging. The Overstory. I’m not sure why this won a Pulitzer (too long, muddled middle third) but it’s a good read if you’re into trees, and if so, you should also read this article about the ancient oaks of Richmond Park and their stewards in our lifetime: ““How many jobs involve managing assets that are 700 or 800 years old?” says Simon Richards, manager of the park. “You’re planting trees thinking, what’s that tree going to be like in 400 years’ time?””

How Maslow evolved his hierarchy of needs from the individual to the collective (or “transpersonal”) at the end of his life.

Panthea Lee’s post about the choices ahead of us. I so admire how beautifully Lee weaves together the personal and the collective in her writing.

On Ramadan and the queer astrologers of early Islam.

I feel very seen by this. “Personally, I have to be weird or my magic is harder to find. I can’t be careful and cool. Status can’t matter. If it starts to matter, it breaks all of my bicycles. I can’t get confused and chase things that other people care about just because I like to chase shit. I need to remember who I am and what I love and why”.

The case for Universal Creative Income: “in the digital world, user rights are civic rights, and creator rights are worker rights.” I sometimes think about our culture’s missing art, the art we would have if UBI existed. More beautiful images like this, perhaps.

Starstruck, a sweet millennial version of Notting Hill.

Writing

Lou and I made some unfurloughing tools last year, which I’m sharing again because furlough is ending. I loved Dan’s feedback about how gentle and caring they are. Lou and I were intentional about that; one of the shared values of our collaboration is “care”. Inspired by how flower buds “unfurl” in spring, we also designed the tools to facilitate personal and organisational regeneration. Regenerative processes, regenerative org design, how ‘bout that?