You Can't Always Get What You Want

Self respect by way of acceptance and putting down what's not meant for you.

Last week I attended a design conference in Texas with a friend I met working at my first notable creative agency in New York City (Number Seventeen). The conference (InHouseInFocus) was hosted by Under Consideration, a multi-arm machine run by Bryony and Armin.

Before the trip, and because we are in the crosshairs of an astrological cometojesus, I was reminded of the guest editorial I had published on the Under Consideration blog, Speak Up, in 2006 when I had just moved to the City discouraged, disillusioned and without proper footwear.

The reason I got the opportunity to write for them 19 years ago was because Design Legend Debbie Millman had taken an interest in my art school blogspot, Life of a Harpy, an incredible flex. She was also responsible for getting me that first job at Number Seventeen and defending me in the Speak Up comments section. Today she doesn’t return my emails but I hold a tender spot for her in my heart anyway.

In case you’re having trouble keeping up, what I’m doing is illustrating the divine timing of it all:

• Agency owner, creative director, 43-year-old professional me

• Listening to a guy give opening remarks at a conference who lightly roasted 24-year-old unemployed me

• In the comments section of his prestigious blog I wrote an essay on

• While sitting next to a friend from my first job I hadn’t seen in 15 years.

• A job I would eventually quit as a baby junior designer

• Because I felt I simply wasn’t good enough

• Moments before I was told I was about to get fired anyway.

Okay back to Dallas. Toward the end of the first day of the conference my eyes started to cross a little. While I was enamored with ideas, education, connections, pages on pages of notes, I felt very much like 2006 Alison. “Freaked out and vulnerable.”

tale as old as time

That night I told my friend (ALSO NAMED ALLISON) how I felt. Which was that I needed to stay up all night quickly rewriting BEST’s entire website before connecting with every single person on LinkedIn and then turning out multi-platform pieces of content that were both smart, funny, and impeccably typeset. She told me it gets easier after you turn 50.

Because I’m mainlining the Chani App I know that the South Node in Virgo is asking us to release our need for perfectionism. The “need” for everything to go the way you want only keeps you in isolation.

When I say need in quotes I do so because everyone knows we usually don’t “need” anything we want. The need for things to go the way we want is just a reflection of the Ego which is very often absolutely not our path.

I had a fleeting moment of wanting to be like the amazing speakers on stage — as accomplished, talented, with the ability to make a beautifully succint deck I could speak to for 45 whole minutes. How did they see the speaker notes on the teleprompter? If I could just master perfect slide transitions while also running a Fortune 1 company art department.

Once I unpacked that a little I realized what I was really jonesing for was to be the same as them because I admired them. That was safe, that was successful, that was seen. Same deal with the 2006 blog if I’m honest.

I feel like this is a bit of a consistent theme of our generation is it not? The herd mentality that if you can fit in or “have” certain life milestones at the right time the way we are all taught “matter,” well, that would be good. That will be what you worked hard for. One thing would lead to another and you’d feel accepted, safe, successful, seen.

But, babe (says to self), sometimes those milestones just aren’t meant for you!

Sometimes the Universe is just going to say I don’t think so honey and the more comfy we (I) can get with this concept, the more let go and less be dragged there will be to answer to.

if you see this on IG next week with my top 5 takeaways no you didn’t

In Joan Didion’s 1961 Vogue essay, On Self Respect, she opens with her infamous story of not getting accepted to Phi Beta Kappa and having to come to terms with losing “the conviction that lights would always turn green” for her. You really need to read the entire article to absorb the soul-quaking power of the concept but I will summarize it inadequately by telling you that in order to have and maintain self respect you need to just accept what is, who you are, and the path you’re travelin’.

“However long we postpone it, we eventually lie down alone in that notoriously un- comfortable bed, the one we make ourselves. Whether or not we sleep in it depends, of course, on whether or not we respect ourselves.”

The next morning at the conference I very quickly (thank you very much years of therapy) saw what I was doing, the narrative I was spinning, and snapped the hell out of it (for the most part hee hee!). I realized that what I had in common with my now friend VP of Creative at Walmart — a company that has more employees than the US military, 200 of which are his — is that we both like to tell stories. We both like to make brand worlds. Maybe we’re even doing a bit of the same thing at the end of the day. Maybe his way is not my way. I must winter in Florida not Arkansas, for one.

Putting the need to be legitimized as a creative person by checking certain boxes all the way down, not carrying that want against my current but accepting it — this is how I can still get a good night’s sleep in an uncomfortable bed.

The metaphors are tweaking out a bit, but you get my point.

I think sometimes it’s really hard to accept certain truths. Deprogramming our need for control. But in doing so, I can be more honest about who I am. And that makes having a lighter pack while hiking the goddamn lemon-squeezer of a path a little easier.

Happy trails, y’all.