Maybe I’m Not Broken
gracie’s muse · no. 003 · maybe i’m not broke
A lot of good stuff happens in my DMs.
Recorded on a night walk in Little River, SC, in a moment of feeling pressure to be posting online while I'm in the thick of living an intense season.
It’s a message sent to a muse of mine, Marc.
It's meant to be listened to. The text is below.
A big part of this season for me is to trust myself. I know that is the number one root cause of my ass-kickings is trust yourself.
Trust. Your. Self.
You know what you're doing. You need to believe in your visions. You need to believe in those callings, and it may not be a prescription for other people, but it is your prescription.
Trust it. Just at least try it and trust it.
And I've been really trying to lean into that, and I do know the shadow sides of all of these topics, like the false starts and the late bloomer and the don't push play.
I know so many women right now that are in the same position as me, and they're still stuck.
So I'm kind of like, there's something to this, and it's not just the shadow and the fear and the blah, blah, blah.
Maybe it's that there's something else revealing itself, and I don't know. I'm really just listening in right now, but it did occur to me today, don't be so hard on yourself.
Maybe there's a method to the madness of not jumping out to post.
When I used to post, it's 'cause I enjoyed it. Something would occur to me, I'd pop in there, I'd wanna share it.
And for some reason, and maybe it's just the energy around me right now or just the season that I'm in could also very well be that, that I'm not ready to talk yet. I'm not ready to post.
I'm not ready to put...the energy I have now is not ready, not because I need to work through a fear or the visibility bullshit, but maybe it's just that my time is coming and when it comes, I will be ready, and I will speak, and I will produce, and I'll do all those things.
But in this moment, maybe it's just not the force. And it reminds me of... this guy, blew up in one year. He went from zero to like one million followers, something like that.
And I've studied him because I found him, in that early stage, but he's just producing, producing, producing high-level. And I've been studying him as a model for me.
But today, he posted a video where he had flu fever or something like that. And he was recording content where it was visible this man is suffering, and he wrote it in the comment 'cause I think somebody was like, "Are you okay?"
And he was like, "Yeah, I recorded this with the flu."
Now meanwhile, his message to the world is, honor your vessel, take care of your vessel. But then he turns around and he forces himself, powers through it to record this content.
And it just spoke to me, even for these people who are out there and that is their platform to speak about, taking care of ourselves and blah, blah, blah, are still forcing themselves.
And it's this point that we live in this model of push, push, push, push, push and go, go, go, go, go and show up and be visible and be seen.
And it's like, yeah, that's great.
But there are also these seasons. Think about any rock star or high-performing artist. They go out, they hit the tour, they're out there every night, they're giving it their all, and then they go and hide for a couple of years just to generate energy again.
And then they come out with another masterpiece and it's a cycle.
My energy guy, when I was working with him, he really helped me understand my energy is like this as well.
He's like,
"You have to think about yourself like a rock star."
Not that I am one, but like how rock stars live and manage their energy through that lens. He's like, "You go out, you fill up your energy, your inspiration, your storytelling through living."
And so you go out and you have your adventures or you go have your experiences where you're fully in the moment and you're not recording in those moments.
You are, you are living it.
And then you go home, you capture, you create, and then you go into the next season.
And then the next season is you, build up that sort of energy for where's next. You plan your next trip and you go out and it's like this repeating cycle.
But when you're actually living it, you're not recording it. You're not capturing it.
Yet we live in this world of social media where it's like you are capturing twenty-four/seven and that's the burnout.
And that's what I've been feeling, Marc. This past couple of years I've been so thick in it and certainly I've had moments where I pop out and I have inspirations and I do it and that's great and I show up to it.
But to be expected to give from your heart and your soul wisdom and something interesting of value and substance, to be expected that your job is to do that twenty-four/seven, not even rock stars do that.
You know what I mean? And so I've been just like maybe I'm not hiding behind excuses.
Maybe I'm not broken.
Maybe I'm not malfunctioning just because I'm not recording it.
Maybe it's like I'm too busy living it, processing it, integrating it, assimilating it. And then I'll have the period, the cycle that I can turn that into art and it will be worthy of your attention.
And when I come out, it'll be so strong and of such substance that I can then come back and recoil a little bit and do that cycle again.
That's how we need to look at ourselves.
Like the true leaders out there, the true stars, the true substance in this world needs to understand that we are not here to compete in this rat race.
We are here to rearrange it.
And if we keep following the same program that everybody else is following, just drowning in the unsustainable pace of output, then we burn out.
Our light burns out.
And that's like something that we've both talked about is the burnout of our light. It's just natural because we are vast and deep and intentional and present.
That takes energy to be present.
These people that are pumping it out, 8,000 times a day are just copy pasting, strategizing. They're repurposing stuff that they've been talking about over and over and over again. They just tweak a thing and put it out again and know that nobody's noticing. But that's not what an artist is.
And I think what's really coming through me in this season is I am an artist and I don't want to diminish my artistry for the burn, the burn to show up, the burnout and water down your gift because you have to be everywhere all the time and having something to say all the time.
It's like, no, I need a quiet season just to get through it.
And then I can offer you something.
And I think that's the difference between an artist and somebody who creates content for social media.
It's not the same.
