The freedom in burning it all down
When you've deleted everything you've ever done in the name of business and freelance advocacy, there's an alternative to crying.
Yesterday, I let out a scream, a wail, that had a bearded guy and two labradorks come running. There was a hole on the screen threatening to pull me in.
“It’s gone, all gone,” I whispered, “Everything, everything.”
My partner looked at me, “What’s gone, honey?”
“Everything I’ve ever written, taught, videoed or presented for my business or the Freelance Jungle.”
His intake of breath was sharp.
“Exactly,” I said before wilting under the monitor’s empty, blank stare.
He led me away from the offending and into the sunshine. It’s there the shock really set in. I was floating above myself, out the top of my head, watching the world spin.
Image: sun at dawn over Windang beach on a cloudy day
Goodbye little ideas
Thirteen years I have freelanced as Unashamedly Creative. For almost as long, the Freelance Jungle has been running. That’s a lot of time to accumulate a lot of ideas, blogs, scraps, and comforting things.
The neatly lined up folders of blog shells, the folders brimming with PowerPoint files, and the sheathes of writing, hours of video, and every carefully collected meme have gone to the planet where left socks and unrequited love reside. They’ve taken with it excels of configurations, lists and ideas. From well worn popular courses to fledgling ideas waiting for their time in the sun, all are now ether, evaporated under the hasty slice and dice of panicked clicks.
For all the messy, creative chaos and protracted birthing, imagination’s rubble is surprisingly pristine clean. It’s the living embodiment of a sparkling nothing.
It’s a story as old as time. One device synchs stuff to one place. It’s the wrong place. You try to get it to go back, but it takes all the files with it. Before you know it, you’re fighting a battle of wills. Only the machine wins and all the files go nowhere but somewhere and never are again.
I am putting one hand up to signal stop and another pressed to my lips.
Please do not run at me with your recovery tricks. I have Googled until my fingers were on fire. I have downloaded that recovery program, activated that rollback, contacted all manner of help desk, consulted Dropbox rewinds and local computer recovery techs. I’ve dug into places I never knew existed. Looked for temp and hidden files like a meticulous blood hound. Scoured, sourced and kept fighting, fighting, fighting...
If I choose to hand my computer over for three or four days, something might come of it with an upward lilt of doubt. But even the geekiest of geeks have given me less than small odds.
So please, do not tell me about your hail Mary. I didn’t write this to hear more fixes. Let my heart fully cleave and die to let in the light and space.
It might be the shock, it might be magical thinking, it might be some weird protective measure that still does not allow this to sink in.
But I’ve realised that’s some strange sense of something positive bubbling in the blood and bruising.
Howling at the moon won’t make it better
This morning at around 3am, a year’s worth of therapy and a decade of helping others has finally kicked in:
Because it is all gone, I now have the freedom to do and say anything. Those times I bemoaned never being able to find things are now replaced with the knowledge I will never find them – or have to worry about that frustration - again. The paper journals I diligently wrote notes in and carved out pretty much every idea I have ever had are smiling. They knew they would win in the end.
And I am free.
Free from the tangle of low-hanging fruit and “write this for SEO”. Free from my half-hearted expectations. Not drowning in half-wanted, half-executed ideas.
I am recalibrated by understanding what matters.
When my heart let out it’s unearthly wail, it thought my book on grief was gone. When I panicked and my stomach pitched to vomit, it was because I worried all my photos of my now departed father were on the chopping block. My knees collapsed at the thought of the book I wrote and taught from, “how to keep working when you’re dying on the inside”, dead. I panicked at the client’s files. I worried about precious photos from my phone that triggered this all.
Oddly, everything that made my heart quake and body shake at the thought of its deletion is still here in some form. Tucked up in a long-forgotten back up file, in a cigar box in a sailor’s trunk, or in a brown paper bag, waiting to be edited and (I guess) retyped, Hunter S Thompson style.
Of course I feel sad and tender. I wish I still had the other stuff. I am going to miss the mental health blogs and the self-care stuff.
But honestly, there’s a weightlessness to it, too. As though in the absence of so many ideas, I guess the ones I go with will be the ones I choose. That’s why I touched the bottom of despair most of Sunday, only to bloop up over the waves of sleep deprivation and into hope in the early hours of this morning.
My feelings aren’t facts. And the facts are no amount of ruminating, crying, bawling or resisting is likely to change the outcome. So, I am laying down the second arrow and refusing to torture myself with it. More than that, I am kind of happy to know anything from here on in is because I really freaking want it.
And while starting from scratch, especially when I have already established something, usually shits me to tears, there’s something nice to feel inside that newness, too.
Come celebrate new beginnings and brave souls
The death of Sinead O’Connor has me asking about bravery, love, mental illness and society. Speaking of death, Dr Annetta Mallon is tackling voluntary assisted dying as a global priority. Gretel Van Lane is inviting you to talk about pleasure over dinner. Teresa Ford Coburn is tackling menstruation. Leyne Elbourne is bringing inner west Sydney reuse culture to you on the ‘gram. Carly Findlay is talking radical access in the arts .
Karan White is cracking open influencer culture. Jacinta Marshall is sharing some great accounting resources. Watch this if you love dogs from film maker Keshi Sacdalan. Benny is sending you joy from Munich’s beer scene.
EVENTS, EVENTS
Finding joy even when chaos reigns with Nance Haxton Monday Aug 7th (an uplifting chat in a time where a lot of people, esp. writers, are freaking out by a Walkley toting journo who is joy personified). FREE- RSVP here https://www.facebook.com/events/1697858170642594/
POD-SPECIFIC INFORMAL CHAT - Establishing a routine (Patreon only)
Join Hayley and I as we talk through establishing a routine.
This is designed with all kinds of chaos and ideas in mind. Curious? Join us Tuesday 8th of Aug at 11am for an informal chat. (deets will be sent via Patreon to the POD or above level).
BACK YOURSELF WITH SANDY TAYLOR
FRIDAY, 11 AUGUST 2023 FROM 14:00-15:30 Sydney time (Patreon only)
Sandy is joining us for a collaborative stress down on how to back yourself that looks at:
1) How to find your version of strength, even if it’s quieter than most
2) Staying the course and keeping yourself motivated to find your version of forward momentum or consistency
3) Developing and maintaining confidence in your abilities in the face of the competition who are comfy on camera and telling everyone how fabulous they are.
https://www.facebook.com/events/1273935839920492
Running a Patreon and need an Accountability Club?
Join me as the A-Club Captain for Patreon’s Fulltime Creator’s Club from August 14th through to October 2nd for weekly sessions to make your money-making Patreon a big thing at an Australia and New Zealand friendly time.
Getting your photography noticed while staying true to creativity with Sam St Jon Aug 25th (Sam’s projects include Together Apart (Covid portraits), Six Degrees of Wollongong, and was part of promoting Illawarra cycling culture to the world via the internationally screened UCI). Deets TBA. Look in Freelance Jungle for details. FREE!
How to produce & make fun ideas successful events with Shane Moon Sept 1st (Great Gong Clothes Swap founder, producer of comedy and cabaret shows, player of New Orleans inspired jazz and all wonderful). FREE – RSVP here https://www.facebook.com/events/296090919595099/
Tackling trickier topics with Gretel Van Lane... Gretel is a facilitator of discussions surrounding grief, singledom, purpose, gender, pleasure and more as dinner conversation as part of her Dinners with a Difference series. She joins us as part of Mental Health Month in October. Details TBC.
If you like my stuff, come hang in the Freelance Jungle, help me create it (and aid the recovery from the loss of all the files by giving me time to do stuff) by joining the Patreon, and check out the FJ website.
Love and other ways we’re sometimes forced to find clarity,
Rebekah
HOLY MOLY!!!!! I am sending you all the sympathies for the tremendous loss but I also really enjoyed reading about the sense of freedom you’ve found in the wake of catastrophe...impressed by your capacity to turn this into a beautiful piece of writing too 👏
Terrific piece. I empathise. Microsoft locked me out of my account in February for reasons I've never understood and I have still not gained access. There were a scary few weeks when I thought I had lost everything that I had diligently been storing in OneDrive (i.e. most of my stuff) until I found it in some duplicate folder buried on my laptop. Still, without being able to access my work emails and having to change all of the logins that used my Microsoft email (most of them) it absolutely devastated my ability to run my business for those few weeks. I had to learn to do without and shrug off whatever information and communication with clients I had lost and set up another email account. I am still locked out.
My current big problem is social media which used to work well for me and now is not. The algorithms hate me now and I hate them. I used to love using social media to promote my work and build my brand and serendipitously discover potential clients, collaborators, content, events, information. Now it just feels hollow and empty. Those potential clients no longer hang out for chats like they used to, everyone just humble brags and curries favour with their little cliques and it's like some school playground, just nasty and superficial and dull. So now I have to re-jig my marketing strategy so that it no longer relies of social media, and that's OK, I can do that, but I feel a real sense of grief at the loss of the social in social media. But, as you described so beautifully in your article, there's a sense of freedom there too.