DISPATCH 003: Navigating the Uncharted Waters of My Life
On feeling lost as hell, relinquishing control, and learning to trust again.
Hello & welcome new folks. This is the third installment of Dispatches from Chrysalis, an honest offering from me to you in the form of a newsletter. My name is Priya Florence Dadlani and I am an NYC-based cultural worker. I was born and raised in Silver Spring, MD to parents each of their own unique double diaspora. In 2018, I founded SPICY, a collective led by and for women and queer/trans people of color utilizing the transformative power of art to change the world. I am also a member of the Jahajee Sisters grassroots action team, working to end gender-based violence in Caribbean communities. Most recently, I started as a Teaching Artist with 826NYC facilitating youth writing workshops. You can learn more about my work, experiences, and background on my website.
As I work to build a digital community in different, more intimate corners of the internet, I’ll pop up in your inbox monthly-ish with Dispatches from Chrysalis - the liminal space I often find myself, constantly on the edge of becoming. I’ll also be including journal prompts in my newsletters so we can process various topics together from wherever. I feel like it’s important to say that these newsletters are for me to work through the chaos of my life as much as they are for y’all. I’m no expert, no genius, and I don’t have it all figured out. I’m simply trying — trying to heal, trying to find my way, trying to find the words. And I’m infinitely grateful you’ve agreed to be a part of this process. Thank you!
It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society. – Jiddu Krishnamurti
I’m in a very fascinating and scary time in my life right now where I am self-employed, and essentially the one in charge of crafting my schedule. This means the responsibility is on me to get things done, and it’s also on me to eradicate the bully in my head that capitalism has so kindly planted there. It’s a thin line between the two; between discipline and surrender, between productivity and fulfillment, between scarcity and abundance. I’m learning how to truly run my own life for the first time and everyday feels a bit like an experiment. Months ago, when I was first thinking about writing this specific dispatch, I’d recently quit my full-time job and the shift was still fresh; I was still feeling the adrenaline rush of leaving the 9-5 life. I still feel very proud of my decision and don’t regret it, but I’m realizing this less traveled path is not easy for obvious reasons. Financially it’s rough, and being accountable to me and only me is also a learning curve. I still want to drop all the gems I have for people working at harmful, racist, exploitative 9-5 jobs (especially in the nonprofit industrial complex) — but I’m also going to drop the questions and difficulties I’m having right now about navigating my new life. I know I don’t want to go back, but the novelty of self-employment has definitely worn off and the reality of navigating uncharted waters is setting in.
As you all know, it has been over a year since the first lockdown began in New York City, NY. I’ve been having many conversations with loved ones about how difficult it is to imagine the person I was before it. I feel like the entire world tilted on its axis and placed us all in a new dimension. On March 12, 2020 I swear I entered a blackhole in the space-time continuum, and it expedited my growth taking me lightyears into the future, then dropped me back off in 2021 with an entirely new agenda for life. It’s as though the universe stretched her long arms out to me, grabbed me, shook me, pushed my face against the glass, and forced me to tell the time on the clock of the world, as Grace Lee Boggs would have liked. Things I’d been dreaming about for a different Priya, maybe one that wasn’t even me, seemed 10x more urgent, necessary, and possible. I’ve called these shifts I went through “portals”, similar to how Arundhati Roy called the pandemic a portal. And one of the portals I went through was sending in a resignation letter at a job that provided me financial security and social status, but also harm and disillusionment.
For three years I worked at a consulting agency that helped nonprofits “build capacity” and “think strategically.” I learned many things at this job, including some skills I utilize to this day like spreadsheeting, creating really informative decks, analyzing qualitative data, and mail merging (my favorite). I also learned what it felt like to be a participant in the toxic ecosystem that is the nonprofit industrial complex. I learned what it felt like to be tokenized, undervalued, and underpaid. I learned what it felt like to have younger, less experienced, white people come into the firm making more money than I did when I started. I learned that they encourage you to become part of an office “family” just so you’ll be easier to exploit, and I learned that there is absolutely nothing “micro” about a micro-aggression. I also learned what it felt like to be treated as a model minority by white leadership because of my race, opposed to the way my Black colleagues were treated. The ongoing denial to address the roots of systemic racism and harmful power dynamics in our workplace was prevalent and calculated regardless of how many Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion trainings we did.
I was offered this job in March 2017, two months before I even graduated from college. I worked remotely from Boston, MA until I graduated and could finally move to NYC. The pressure from my parents and myself to get a job immediately after undergrad was so intense, and by this time I was too aware of my hefty student loan debt. Me getting a job was equivalent to me proving all this debt was worth it. But surprisingly, when I got an offer for this job, I barely even took note of the salary. I truly didn’t even care. All I cared about was the fact that I actually got a job. The fact that it was in proximity to the nonprofit world (which at the time was very important to me) was the cherry on top. It is both laughable and sad to look back at how happy I was just because someone, ANYONE, wanted to hire me. It is also both laughable and sad how much I used to believe that the nonprofit industrial complex would bring about the change the world needed (spoiler alert: it won’t). When I moved to NYC, I was subletting a room in a roach-ridden apartment with a few other people and then had to couch-surf with friends for a few weeks before finally having enough money to sign a lease with a couple others. I never thought once about whether or not I was making equitable pay, I was again simply happy to just have a job. Like so many I stayed quiet, put my head down, and did my work.
However, I knew early on that my job was not only unfulfilling, but the work itself was deeply misaligned with my personal values. Consulting, in my opinion, can be extremely paternalistic and shady work. The core of it is basically convincing people that you know more than them and that they need to pay you a ton of money to access your very specific knowledge. And sometimes it can be worth it, when the consultants in question don’t just have academic accolades but lived experience working with or being of impacted communities. However, that’s a rarity from what I have seen. And when white consultants go into organizations that serve predominantly Black and brown people, to advise on strategy? You can only imagine the missteps due to a lack of a racial or gender justice lens that can manifest in violent and harmful ways. I can talk for ages about this, but ultimately I knew the work was not sitting right with my spirit, although at the time I didn’t have the words to explain why. What I did know is that I was craving a creative outlet, and so in late-2017 I started a zine-making collective with a group of women and queer Black and brown people that is now SPICY. This was work but also play, and it was a dire lifeline for me in a time when I was lacking community, care, friendship, a political home, etc. My work with SPICY became the North Star that would eventually inspire me to dream beyond the confines of my job.
However, it took three long years for that to happen, and in that time I perfected the art of shape-shifting. I was known in my office as super cheery and jovial, but no one really knew me intimately. I was definitely other-ized and felt it, so I made myself as approachable as possible. Almost like I was a little critter at the petting zoo. I imagine my coworkers looking at me and thinking, “It’s weird and looks different, but I can still come up and pet it. It won’t bite!” At first, I saw this shape-shifting I did to become a soft-natured critter that doesn’t bite back as a “talent.” However I no longer see it as such. It’s more of a survival mechanism, maybe a curse, and can also be seen as a weakness — me being complicit with trading in my values and human essence for a check. But I didn’t normalize this shape-shifting on my own, it was passed down to me through my own family’s trauma and need to conform under imperialism, capitalism, and white supremacy. Apparently my grandfather used to always tell my mom, “Well, I’m off to the white people's work,” when he left in the mornings.
Without my shape-shifting, I feared I’d lose everything - money, stability, options, life, etc., and I don’t want to at all downplay the sense of financial security and safety a full-time job gives. It is real and helped me fulfill my basic human needs which is a privilege to be checked, especially while living in NYC. I also know that nothing is ever truly secure, especially when you have to shape-shift to make it work. I was not secure nor safe in that environment. It’s a trap because there are perceived benefits of having proximity to whiteness, but they are an absolute illusion because in those spaces my existence is not rooted in real care therefore it’s not sustainable. The one basic need that was never fulfilled was to be recognized in the workplace as a whole human, and that is just not possible under capitalism.
Even before last summer, I had always felt out of place in the 9-5 structure. I feel like mentally I didn’t fit — I hated sitting in a cube for 8 hours a day, I hated working with the same people every day and not meeting anyone new, I hated doing the same exact tasks repetitively. I know I’m not alone in this either. In the long-run, I feel that capitalism forces us to pigeon-hole ourselves in roles or careers that should last lifetimes, and that just does not allow for the multiplicity of our personalities or interests to shine through. It flattens us when we are not flat creatures. What if for a few years I want to be a writer, then I’ll become a teacher, then maybe a gardener, and then one year I’ll learn how to be a doula… why shouldn’t we be able to dabble in different lines of work? Of course we can, and there are people who do, but capitalism is set up for us to be most “successful” when we don’t. This is the matrix I knew I always wanted to break free from.
So, I always knew I would leave my job eventually, but of course I was waiting for the “perfect” time, and the “perfect” new opportunity. Neither of those things came. Instead the pandemic came, and a massive political uprising that resulted in daily protests demanding an end to state sanctioned violence. Immediately, I found myself being called to not only be a part of it, but to be a part of a lifelong movement that would be the revolution. The work at my full-time job was in direct misalignment with this desire — it was the violent status quo. Then one day after I had already began plotting on quitting, I found out I was being transferred to a whole new department, a new team, and all of the “progress” I made at the job was essentially wiped away. I was infuriated. With encouragement from loved ones I realized that I simply had to quit for a multitude of reasons. There was no other option for me.
And for transparency sake, since I know a lot of people quit jobs and never disclose how they actually made it work financially: ever since I started my full-time job I would put most of my check (after paying bills) into a savings account and would just pretend it didn’t exist. For a majority of the last three years I was paying $850 in rent and making $42,500 (pre-tax) at my job, but towards the end was making $55,000 (pre-tax) and paying $1,250 in rent. I also do not have any financial support from family or anyone else but I also do not support anyone financially, and while I am in lots of student loan debt, having them be paused for a year due to COVID-19 helped a lot. Also, the fact that when quitting I was able to get paid out for all 27 of the vacation days I never took helped a lot too. I saved up about $7,500 in total (which sounds like a lot, but surprisingly goes kind of fast) and it was due to these funds that I was able to make the decision to send in a resignation letter on July 6, 2020.
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When I left my job last July, I began a process of unraveling. I am usually an intense planner and in that moment I decided to forego my obsession with control, and instead remain open to new opportunities for personal healing, creativity, and work. To simply just, as they say, walk by faith and not by sight. I also had to take time to become reacquainted with myself. As the St. Lucian poet Derek Walcott said, I had to give my heart back to myself. I had to relearn my interests, ways, proclivities, desires, and needs. I’m still doing this now, and I’m realizing how necessary it is to be gentle with myself along the way. My word for 2021 is “slowness” and I’ve been finding all the ways to prioritize that as someone who feels very uncomfortable with the idea of moving slowly. I also struggle with the need to project capitalist ideals on my new life — I often feel like I am not doing enough and I feel a need to quantify my value by how many deliverables I send out or how much money or progress I am making. This is all capitalist conditioning I am unpacking everyday. I have also been training myself to be proactive and seek out the opportunities that seem too good to be true — this does not simply apply for seeking out gigs, but more importantly seeking out help. As I mentioned earlier, none of this is easy for me. The road is less traveled for a REASON. I still never know if I’m “doing it right”, but I have to remind myself that embodying the liberation I demand for all people is always going to be right. Like a computer, I have to reprogram myself to see the endless possibilities in the path I have chosen.
There have been some integral tools that have helped me along the way, and I’ll share them with you all. During the Jahajee Sisters retreat I spoke about in my first newsletter, I learned how to confront the legacy of my scarcity complex, and begin to embrace abundance, transformation, and non-transactional radical love. My scarcity mindset is one that white supremacist culture has forced onto me and my ancestors. It’s rooted in the thought that there is not enough, that there will never be enough. That we are not enough. And this doesn’t just pertain to money — this pertains to self-worth, success, love, friendship, etc. Scarcity mindset tell us to hoard all of our skills and resources, and not share or redistribute them. Scarcity mindset is what makes us envious when our friends win because we believe there is only so much to go around. But that’s a lie. With a scarcity complex we cling to the crumbs that the ruling class gives us, and we never dare question it. Scarcity complex was the motherly voice in the back of my head telling me to keep my head down, work hard, and never rock the boat at my job. Abundance mindset, on the other hand, is the truth that there is more than enough to go around. There is enough love, enough friendship, and enough success to share. I am enough. An abundance mindset is community care. An abundance mindset is healing because I believe in tomorrow. Abundance mindset is checking my privilege and redistributing whatever power I have because there is no need to hoard. An abundance mindset is real political education. An abundance mindset is socialism. Abundance mindset for me is faith in God, knowing the universe will provide. It is abolishing binaries and leaning into the infiniteness of the human experience and feeling that joy. Abundance mindset is taking risks because I am not alone and my community will be there to catch me when I fall. Abundance mindset is a solidarity economy. Abundance mindset is seeing failure as integral. It’s sharing my last with you. Abundance mindset is limitlessness. I made journal prompts that helped me realize all this here, and I hope you can utilize them as well.
“The younger me has been screaming for me to tap back / into the earlier lessons deep in my knapsack.” — Jordan W. Carter, Inside Season
Another one of the tools that helped me navigate these uncharted waters was a tarot reading I got done by the amazing and grounding Talia of Goddess Guidance Tarot (if you’re on the fence, this is your sign to book one now!). Before going into this reading, I was struggling with the overwhelming feeling of being lost. Feeling like there were a million paths in front of me and zero idea of which one is mine. For me it can actually feel suffocating to not have a solid and predictable plan laid out in front of me, and it even felt like I was on the outs with God. Like there was a plan for me, but no one was telling me what it was. It can feel painful. I shared all of this in my tarot reading with Talia, and one of the things I took away from the reading was that capitalism is predictable. We know what to expect there, and may even have a Stockholm-syndrome comfort in that structure. But anything outside of that structure felt new to me, or perhaps more accurately, felt like a very distant memory. Being self-employed has given me a freedom that has also left me with whiplash from all of the trauma I previously experienced not only in my old job, but in academia, in childhood, etc. It can feel extremely disorienting to not have to report to anyone. This is why it was so enlightening to realize through this reading that this feeling of being “lost” is actually a symptom of me attempting to live freely. I realized that I’m not on the outs with God, but I’m actually walking in my purpose which puts me in direct alignment with my divine plan, even if I’m not sure what it is yet. I learned that not everything needs to be revealed at once. I learned that it is very important for me in this time to cultivate a practice of listening to my intuition. We can only access our divine protection if we listen for it, and it’s so much more necessary for me now to build a relationship with my spirit guides, my ancestors, and especially my inner child in order to walk confidently and knowingly in my path. It was funny to hear this because recently my morning meditation practice became extremely integral to my wellbeing. Before, if I would skip a morning meditation I wouldn’t really feel a difference, but now when I skip it I feel again like I am tuned out of the universe. These moments of silence, reflection, and clarity are my tools on this journey that I continuously have to sharpen.
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According to my mom, my grandfather used to always say, “Plan yuh work, and work yuh plan!” This is a saying that has been seared into my mind from a young age. But the reality of my current situation is: How do you plan in the current apocalyptic dimension we are in? How do you plan when your body has yet to catch up with your mind? How do you plan when you realize that the things you want to do and become are radically different than what you wanted a year ago? How do you plan when you’re trying to heal? How do you plan when you’re busy listening? At what point does planning become a deviation from your divine path? I’m not sure. I wish my grandfather was here so I can ask him these questions…
My grandfather’s hat is the centerpiece of my newly assembled gallery wall. About once a month I’ll walk past it and feel pulled to put it on, and most importantly smell it. Before his hat was in my possession, it was in the backseat of my aunt’s gold Corolla. When I inhale the scent of his hat, it’s fresh and leathery, how I imagine the hat of a tall, old man would smell. Whether it’s really his scent or the lingering smell of the car, I’m not sure. I know I met him before because we have a very iconic picture of baby me sitting on his long legs, but unfortunately I have no memories of him as he died eight months after I was born. I have heard so much about him though, like how he was a man of few words, hard-working, very sweet and giving, a good judge of character. He loved steak and ice cream. These stories make up about half of my memory of him, and half I’ve invented. I imagine his life, I imagine all of his schemes and plans to get to where he was going. I imagine the things we could have talked about or the advice he would have given me. I imagine he would send me a knowing glance when my mom would scold me and we would share a smile, like many cool grandfathers in the movies do. I imagine what we could have had in common. I imagine the necessity of having a plan when one is navigating life as a young Guyanese boy, with three brothers and no father, but one very strong mother named Florence and one very big dream. I imagine the necessity of having a plan when picking up and moving from your home country to another life in the United States. I wonder if he would always plan his work and work his plan, or if he ever winged it. I wonder if he ever felt lost or unsure of himself. I wonder if he can hear me now. Maybe he will send me a sign, or perhaps he already has.
Journal Prompts as I Navigate the Uncharted Waters of My Life
This week's Journal Prompts are heavily influenced by the topics in this dispatch including feeling lost, feeling liberated, quitting things, learning to listen, trust, etc. However, I also encourage you all to complete journal prompts I previously created (found here) about transitioning from a scarcity complex to an abundance mindset.
If you could sit down and feast with yourself, what questions would you ask?
What about yourself are you dying to know?
Who do you work for?
Who do you live for?
A mentor once told me to set aside the question “What do you want to do?” and embrace the question, “How do you want to live?”
So — how do you want to live?
How do you find balance between discipline and surrender?
Imagine an alternate timeline where the pandemic never happened.
What makes up the gap between you in our current reality and you in that alternative timeline?
Have you mourned that gap?
When lost, in what do you trust?
When was the last time you listened quietly to the universe?
What did you hear?
Think of one ancestor you’d like to receive guidance from. On a slip of paper, write the questions you’d like to ask them. Put it under your pillow and sleep on it, then pay attention to your dreams and your surroundings.
If you’re able to do the journal prompts, please let me know how it goes and do share any feedback! You can email me at pfdadlani@gmail.com or DM me at @priya.florence.