PROCESSING.

I started watching My So Called Life again, a show I haven’t seen since 1994. I was listening to an interview with Claire Danes where she was recalling moments from the show and I immediately craved a revisit of the flannels that draped every scene (and Jordan Catalano of course!).

I love watching "teenage" shows as an adult. They resurface the teenage parts in me and provide market research for what my own teenagers might be going through. It’s a stage of life that still feels so familiar. An explosive inner world meets a pressurized outer world and poof, it’s suddenly hard to distinguish who we want to be vs who we’re supposed to be. And any clarity that we do have along the way is usually sacrificed against our parents’ and peers’ expectations. Angela had a line in the first episode that sums it up perfectly: “You agree to have a certain personality just to make it easier on everyone. But how do you even know it’s you?"

This line still resonates at 46. I have to wonder if it resonated then at 15. Or was I convinced that I was being myself, completely unaware of the performances that had been programmed into auto-pilot. It happens gradually; you find comfort and acceptance in one area but that exact same version of you isn’t accepted in another. So you morph between school you and home you. The you that feels newly independent + empowered vs the one that feels like a confined child whose instincts are repeatedly questioned. It slowly develops a combination-you. One that you assume you’ll be free from juggling once you’re out of the house. But instead, you learn that the categories just grow.They become work you, friend you, partner you, parent you…and somewhere in there, still kid you. Each category comes with its own pressure and expectations, making it hard to know where others end and you begin.

I think we’re all undergoing a coming of age right now. Some of us are fed up with the outdated playbook that we were given. We’re finally learning that the things we were told to reach for aren’t the things that will make us happy - or even good people. We’re being asked to question if the beliefs that were assigned to us are actually ours. We might appear like rebellious teenagers from the outside, but I think that we’re all returning to ourselves and remembering our instincts over our instructions. We’re remembering that we’re driven by connection rather than fear. That we’re creators not producers. That we’re all good at our core and that it’s Ok to turn our compass inward.

I’m feeling that shift in myself and I’m seeing it so much in others - which gives me hope! It makes me hopeful that maybe we’re rewriting the script for our kids. Allowing them to play out the roles that they came here to play, without our imposed curriculums delaying what they’re meant to share with the world. Deciding to create this monthly journal came from a desire to get back to that for myself. I hit a wall on the cycle of pressure to do certain things followed by guilt for not doing said things. I wanted to honor my love for structure + deadlines, without becoming an angsty teenager that was bitter at the deadlines for not being my own. I was on a hamster wheel of productivity with regret that I wasn’t allowing more self-discovery through play and experimentation.The things that have been deemed indulgent and unproductive.

So I decided to revisit younger me and ask her what she actually enjoyed doing before she met the rules of the world. Figuring that out was harder than I expected. It took days of journaling over winter break to get back in touch with that part of myself. I tried to remember what I did when I was alone back then - what did I actually enjoy when no one was watching? Finally, I remembered: there was furniture rearranging, thumbing through and hoarding magazines, taking photos, gathering random objects on walks to arrange or collect, playlist making, writing in my journal, doodling geometric shapes. I actually had a rich world of curiosity to myself. It just sadly became fogged up by overachievement.

From there I made a list of the things that I crave most today as an adult. What did I continually regret not making time for? It turns out I’m still craving the exact same things that I was naturally drawn to as a kid. And better yet, these things are already baked into my studio process. I had just glossed over them as meaningless check points to an end. So I decided to be more intentional with these “pointless” tasks. To make them a priority in my days and weeks, just like I’ve made adulting a priority. Let the kid and adult in me coexist. The kid in me likely has more to teach + share than the programmed version of me! She just needs some guidance to direct her spontaneity. A tasked scavenger hunt if you will.

And so I’m off on a monthly scavenger hunt. Sparked by a color palette, with clues along the way that lead me to places I want to visit. It will map me back home with giddy excitement to share what I collected along the way.