It’s hard to maintain motivation in a season of no’s.
No, you are not wanted at this residency. No, this fellowship is not for you. No, this grant will not be funding your work.
It’s also hard to maintain vision in a time of political chaos and economic disarray.
I have little room left to maintain a social life when I’m drowning in bills. I don’t want to be active on social media when whatever I share will be sandwiched between genocide updates and vulgar exposes of the unaccountable elite.
Lately, the no’s have been coming in replies to job applications. For the first time in years, I find myself looking for full-time work for structure and stability.
I’ve been fortunate enough to attract work through word of mouth and community connections over the past 5+ years of freelancing but with the increasingly authoritative, conservative-driven cultural climate, budget cuts, layoffs, and the rising cost of living, securing work across creative and arts-related fields has been a monthly challenge. So many others on the talent roster at my New York agency have said the same thing: “diverse” talent is getting booked less and less, people don’t want us anymore. Trad wife content is trending and people are regressing their taste to “play it safe1.”
(By the way, I am looking for LA-based talent representation if anyone has agency/agent or management leads in film, TV, and commercial! And if anyone has writing or creative strategy-related freelance projects I could be tapped into, please let me know 🫶🏼 I also have plenty of personal & professional development workshops for creative communities here, ICYMI)
For every “no,” I get in my inbox, I have to tell myself yes. Yes, I still believe in you. Yes, this effort is still worth it. Yes, you are still very much full of talent and skill even if this one person/company/gatekeeper doesn’t see it.
I have to keep trying to make a living, despite it all. What else am I to do?
So I’m here, writing from bed. Sleepy. Stressed. But in writing this and sharing with you, I’m insisting on keeping my agency intact.
When the words don’t come, I take a nap and I wait for a sentence to flow from my brain to my heart to my fingers, however long it takes. It does come, eventually. Because my body always has something to say.
I imagine so many of us are taking part in this balancing act. In order to honor my heartache and pain and rage, I end up neglecting my long list of adulting to do’s. And when I push my feelings away to power through for the sake of submitting one more application, getting one more task done, it feels like I’m compromising my spirit’s need for space to process. It’s as if satisfaction and fulfillment take a backseat in the necessary pursuit of material safety and security.
I want a world where we can have both, where we can feel it all and have it all. But that is not my reality right now. So, I must find fulfillment in the everyday act of trying.
If you, too, are in a looping cycle of fighting against your needs and wondering “why can’t my brain just work with me?,” here are two considerations to gently push yourself into a state of productive action2.
Oftentimes I notice that when I power through fatigue to get a task done, I burn out quicker. This week, I noticed how much my body resisted the idea of “business as usual” while sifting through the cultural reckoning unfolding in the released PDF files. Whenever I feel this degree of dissonance, I remind myself: it’s very reasonable to feel demoralized and this is exactly why it’s important to infuse morale and dimension into your work. Just as the world is shaped by chauvinistic PDFs who hoard wealth and abuse power, it’s also shaped by people in places all over the world advocating for better infrastructures, better conditions, better practices of loving and tending to each other.
As much as the world is shaped by individualism and greed, it’s also shaped by our ability to stay with ourselves and stay with each other through the struggles. If the world is webbed together by our thoughts and behaviors, one act of compassion can activate another and another and another.
The labor of care is never futile, even if this work is less funded and less promoted. Please do not forget this.
Lately, my body is resisting desensitization. My body listens. It hears the rumble of an empire tumbling down and with this context, of course it’s hard to reply to an email. Of course it’s hard to finish an essay, because who the hell has the energy to read for leisure nowadays? Of course it feels like nothing matters.
If my body is resisting the disconnection required to “power through a day,” what does it look like to show up as I am? To do a little less pretending, to be a little more honest, to look for the people actively building toward a more humane world.
And if I can’t name the psychological block that’s keeping me from starting/continuing/finishing a task, I simplify it into sensory input. What is the environment around me? Am I comfortable in this seat? Am I wearing something appropriate for the weather? Am I properly hydrated?
There’s a reason why meditations always start with breath. Practitioners call it “arriving in the body,” language that resonates with me as an auDHDer prone to disassociation. By narrowing my focus to just my inhales and exhales, I can tune out the noise of the outer world and listen to the subtle messages being announced in my inner ecosystem.
The other night, my spirit craved a 2-hour karaoke session so that’s exactly what I did in my living room. I sang with the spirit of Mariah Carey, Sabrina Carpenter, Chappell Roan, and Lady Gaga. By channeling the energy of these pop star divas (and activating my throat chakra ;), I felt a tiny bit more grounded, a tiny bit more happy, a tiny bit more alive. In times of loss and despair, joy and celebration allow us to exercise our agency. While we can’t choose the conditions we’re in, we can design the life we want to live within these conditions.
The body has its needs, but so does the spirit. The spirit wants to exercise its gifts. The spirit wants to express itself freely. The spirit wants to be witnessed without judgement.
So with that said, sometimes when the words just won’t come, when the body just doesn’t want to “work,” simplify your day with this 2-part questionnaire:
What is my body resisting?
What is my spirit craving?
Whatever answers come, I hope they bring you closer to yourself and your sense of power.
That’s all the insight I’ll share for now.
As always, thank you for engaging with my work. Please leave a comment and/or share with a friend if this resonates!
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/)/) ( . .) c( づ♡
Jezz
P.S. While I’m searching for full-time work, I’m also making a deliberate effort to grow my Substack income. I am sitting on too much wisdom not to share! I have a growing archive of essays I’m editing, resource guides and helpful “how to’s” I’m putting together, and you may see less and less public posts like this. I’ve tried to avoid doing this for as long as possible, because I’ve always wanted my work to be as accessible as I can make it. But a friend reminded me, my work has to be accessible and sustainable to me too. Simply put, I can no longer afford to write and share without monetizing. If you’ve been a free subscriber of my Substack for a while and would like to upgrade to a paid subscription for $5/month, it would mean the world to me and help me reach my goal of getting 1,000 paid monthly subscribers to cover my cost of living here in LA.
Safety for people of dominant, well-represented identities usually means falling in line with the status quo. This perpetuates a cycle of exclusion that keeps people on the margins from accessing the opportunities needed to grow.
Everyone has a different set of abilities, privileges, resources, capacities, and tools. Therefore, by productive action, I mean any change in mindset that allows you to secure and/or advocate for your base needs to be met. While systemic oppression isn’t our fault, we always have agency and responsibility over our lives. This is a reminder that you have access to a source of power that is uniquely yours and through this energy, any change you want to make in your life is possible.
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