Be the designer of your life
Last Friday was my last day of the Deep Dive.
It was utterly mundane in a sunshiny, pleasant way. I took my usual bus and rode my bike past the old man who is always sitting in front of his house. I waved, biking past apartments and a field of wildflowers to my left, houses and a burgeoning garden to my right. I thought about how easy it was for me to bike up that hill on Manor. I used to have to walk my bike up. I thought about how the garden used to be so small, and now it’s enormous. I reminded myself to be present, knowing that today would feel deceptively normal.
When I think about what I will miss most, it is that instant ability to work on new skills. At the Deep Dive, I would think of something I wanted to work on, and instantly I could bring it to Jeff or the group and work on it. We had people to work with and a space ready to go, every day. I’ll miss bottomless coffee pots and being surrounded by the hum of art-making and laughter. No morning is complete without Ramin’s early morning booty dancing and wild cackling laughter. I’ll miss the humanity of the people at Imagine Art who spend their days making art and valuing each other for exactly who they are, and not who they should be.
The beautiful thing about doing something for 9 months is you get to see the garden grow. Most people take two-week trips or go somewhere for a few days. We take a training program for a week and expect a lot of change. Right now, for me, the beauty is in the time taking. A couple weeks abroad doesn’t interest me anymore. How about a couple months? How much deeper would my experience be? We feel like we need to be in a hurry, we need to check off all the boxes. What if we valued each activity more?
One of the most important things I’ve learned during the Deep Dive this year is to value fewer things more. Do less, and take time with each thing. This is where the juice is.
I was packing up my things and my room was a mess. In the past, I had always been a person who found herself in chaos without knowing why or how. I wasn’t a designer of my life. I was a victim of bad habits and lessons unlearned.
Packing was no exception. I had boxes everywhere, stuff and clothes were strewn wildly all over my room like they’d just been beaten out of a piñata. I called my friend Jeff to help me. He had decided to live a minimalistic lifestyle with nothing but two suitcases. That’s right, two f8&$# suitcases. I figured he could help me downsize.
He told me about something he had done when he was deciding what would stay or go: take one item at a time in your hands. Be fully present with it. Think about what it has been for you. Ask yourself if it makes you happy. Not if it looks good, or if it might make other people happy — does it make you happy, right now. If it does, keep it. If it doesn’t, say goodbye to it and thank it for what it has been for you.
This is not how most people pack up their shit. We sling things around, we panic and shove. We make split decisions based on haphazard justifications or what others might think of it. We don’t often sit quietly for long enough to listen to ourselves about what we want. Most of us are not designers of our lives— but we can be.
Last summer I was a dizzying merry-go-round of misery, frustration, depression, ambition, and hopelessness. I believe it’s the same stuff they use to make rat poison. I was waiting for other people to validate me with acting jobs, teaching English feverishly to children online at 4:30 in the morning (which I unfortunately hated), blowing money on important necessities like overpriced lattes and gym memberships (we’ll call this self-medicating), blowing money on expensive acting classes, lying to my mother, and spinning spinning spinning further and further out of orbit, further from myself. Nothing was in my control, and I was ungrowing.
When something like a life is given to us, we aren’t told how to be designers. We’re told how to be actors. Someone else writes us a script, tells us where to stand, what to do. If something doesn’t work it’s not our job to change it — that’s the director’s job. We’re just actors. If we want a job, we are at the casting director’s behest. We fit into their design.
It’s harder to be a designer. You have to take a lot of things into account. Suddenly, you are responsible. You must think about all the moving parts and what you want to happen based on your knowledge, your experience, and your gut.
An actor assumes that things are the way they are and that there’s nothing to be done about it. A designer sees life and knows that they are in control. They consciously decide how things should be and why. They see the way things are and develop a strategy to create the best possible experience. They have well manicured Google Calendars. Everything they want to do goes on the calendar, including downtime.
An actor packs her things and laments that packing is such a chaotic and demoralizing endeavor. She loses important things over the years during this painful process and accepts that this is part of life.
A designer organizes the room so that boxes to go through are on one side, and finished boxes are on the other. She clears a clean space in the middle so it’s a pleasant experience. She gets post-it notes and puts it on the boxes so she knows what’s in them. She takes time to think about what will make her the person she most wants to be, and what things will help her in that endeavor. She knows that she never has to be a victim of circumstance, no matter what situation she is in.
The designer knows that when she buys things, she’s not buying them to fill a hole in her soul, and that she can afford it. She knows that she can find a way to teach amazing, adult ESL students at times that work for her. If she doesn’t know how to cook, she can learn. If she is a disorganized mess, she can learn how to be different from people who know. She knows that no matter who is casting what, she will always be able to cast herself in her own shows and give her gift to humanity.
Listen. Listen to what you are feeling and thinking. Can you redesign what is happening to make it a better experience? Can you be more conscious?
Act on it.
Be a designer.
