I was standing in front of a convenience store on a sunny day watching a Black American man hustle for money. This is the most accurate representation of my racial heritage I’ve seen yet in a nocturnal dream—a robust family lineage made up of people who have had to work very hard to create unique ways of earning a living.
As I stood there, I was impressed with his opportunism and took a glance at the empty sidewalk in front of the store. I wondered if I launched into some kind of musical performance would people pay me too. As I was thinking deeply about this, he came back up to the store, resting against the wall not far from me and sighed, “I had to scrap it up, but I got my $200 for today.”
“That’s great,” I said looking at him. “I sell books, and I do good to make that much per month.”
Then he said to me, “What you need to do is put yourself out there.”
I rolled my eyes at him. I’ve been putting myself “out there” for over a decade of my life now. That advice is almost on par with when people say, “Oh, just be yourself, and you’ll be fine.” Like, what does that even mean?
He noticed my annoyance and softened his tone, saying, “Tell me what you got.”
“I have a blog…” I said slowly.
“Uh-huh.”
“And a Substack.”
“Have you published to your blog recently?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Have you posted to Substack after publishing to your blog?”
I hesitated. “Uh…no.”
Dang, I felt called out.
Then he said, “See. You gotta let people know what you got. Remember, people really like two things: they really like sauce, and they really like spice. Sauce and spice.”
Sauce and spice.
Those words repeated in my mind as the dream faded, and I regained consciousness. I laid in bed and reflected.
I understood what he meant by spice, as in “spicing things up,” but the term “sauce” was not familiar to me at all. I couldn’t figure it out, so I wrote it off as just some weird subconscious thing.
That was a year ago.
Recently I was watching a Black rapper on YouTube react to a music video by Stray Kids, my favorite K-pop group. He was reacting to their music video “God’s Menu” when he said, “They got that sauce.”
My eyes literally popped open when I heard those words. Never had I heard that phrase outside of my own mind, and I still didn’t get it. But at least I knew it wasn’t some made up thing.
I watched another rapper (who was not Black) react to the same music video. When he was watching the video he was like, “It’s like they’re saying that they got that sauce.” Then he paused the music video and explained to the audience, “When a rapper says someone has sauce, they’re talking about their swagger.”
I finally got it. Sauce is about style, the way one carries themselves, the confidence, and the statement they make. And spice is about excitement, surprise, and that extra kick.
For me, my spice is my unique perspective, my imagination that never stops, and my humor.
But my special sauce…
It’s where I’m a little too much.
It’s where I’m the most myself.
And it’s about how all of my work—from my essays about INFPs, HSPs, multi-passionate multipotentialites, burnout and productivity to my fiction, fanfics, and crazy dreams—revolve around one main theme:
Learning to live life in a way that is aligned with the truth of who you currently are—physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.
Authentic living is my sauce. It’s the way I walk.
It’s championing the value of learning to live in a way that feeds your true creative self instead of exhausting yourself from trying to fit into systems that don’t fit.
So do you know what your spice and sauce is?
If so, you gotta let people know what you got.
And if you’re still trying to figure it out, no worries. It took me an entire year to figure out what “sauce” even means! Uncovering these things doesn’t come from pressure. The discovery is born from curiosity and experimentation.
I’ve created a simple and free worksheet called, The Life Alignment Audit. I designed it to help people who are currently saying, “The way I’ve been living isn’t working, and I don’t know how to live in a way that is true to who I am.”
If you’re looking, maybe this can be your first step towards discovering your own special sauce.
I’ve been blowing up my own blog with new stuff lately. So I highly recommend dropping by my Thoughts page, reading through my list of new blog posts and podcast episodes over the past month, and then picking whatever speaks to you.
My husband actually reads my blog, and some days ago he said, “So tell me more about the dream of the white wolf.”
I knew he was referring to You’re My Inspiration and The Garden. I told him, “Those stories are inspired by my dreams. They’re not the actual dreams.”
He admitted that he knew that, and that he wanted to know more about my ACTUAL dreams of the white wolf.
So I shared a little bit about how I first met the white wolf in a dream where I was sitting in a minivan, and then later he showed up again in our home, and then later it became apparent that he wasn’t just simply a wolf.
Back in the spring of this year I had written an essay that contained a curated collection of these “White Wolf” dreams. This collection is curated because if I wrote ALL of the dreams, I might have a crazy weird novella on my hands. I submitted that essay to a contest, but I didn’t hear anything back. Recently I revisited the website of the contest just to see that the website hasn’t been updated at all. The page inviting writers to submit their work is still there, although the deadline is months past due now. Just my luck.
So since that was a dead end, I’m sharing this essay on my blog instead. The title is “Entre Chien et Loup.”
I’ve never cringed so much at my own writing.
And I think it might just be the best thing I’ve ever written so far.
Thank you so much for being here and for reading. I think I’ll try to be somewhat more regular with the emails or at least posting to Substack, so The Hustler doesn’t have to show up in my dreams again to teach me a lesson.
But I also know that I don’t need to hustle to share what I have with you.
~Arcadia Page
Intuitive Writer/Artist/Creative Rebel ⚡
and…
Authentic Life Alignment Coach ☕
(Because people think that being a certified self-care coach is about doing skin care or something, so I had to clarify 🙄)
⋆˚☆˖°⋆｡° ✮˖ ࣪ ⊹⋆.˚
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