an underachiever
꩜ becoming societally unimpressive
It’s a cloudy July morning - an enveloping fog mirrors what I’ve been internally experiencing, which appears to be a loss of motivation. “Smoke and mirrors” is a classic technique of magical distraction in which an item of sorts hovers effortlessly.
It’s shocking to the untrained mind.
A hanging entity without the earthly grounding to be a part of the earth.
That’s been my July, my motivation.
Missing on a milk carton. Diffused into the air with the lingering scent of lavender essential oil and a crackling of a book that desires to be read before responding to someone, again. It seems that there is always someone to respond to now.
It’s a trick, this collective pressure to be constantly motivated. Society is the magician, and you are the participant in the show.
My YouTube algorithm has been subconsciously suggesting that I need a “glow-up.”
I need to uplevel. Buy a new dress. Start a budget. Change my diet. Put on lipstick. Take a new supplement. Cut out coffee. Set another boundary.
Glow-ups are side effects of the pharmaceutical motivation complex.
This type of content suppresses the necessary treatment of whatever the opposite of a glow-up is—the unruly self. Your ability to ghost, which becomes essential for some time. Your lack of current style. The soul-deep rebellion of doing anything about it. Your in-betweens. The unglamorous part of transformation. The cocoon that keeps you crawling. You forget to walk, and it’s called failure or laziness.
I am just remembering.
Aren’t we all?
My memory is like a child who refuses to tell you what just happened.
Cloaked in weeds. I’m picking mustard and blowing wishes in dandelions. I’ve decided that mowing my mental lawn doesn’t suffice. I need to love the weeds before thinking that cutting them would solve it. My father’s solution would never suffice.
I’m sorry, Dad, I can’t perform like you can. I’m impressed with how long that type of production can go on for. I feel like I’ve expired, and any external stimulus has only made me relinquish the incentive of motivation even more.
My brain is hungry, once more. Illusionary satitaiton from attaining something, anything at this point. A need for a great answer with the in-person prompt of “What’s new with you?”
Funny how remembrance needs to be wrapped like a package with a catchy hook and a loud thumbnail.
It’s so uncomfortable being this quiet with yourself.
You could hear a pin drop in my empty house of motive. That’s the saying, right?
It’s finally occurred to me that what I’ve considered “motivation” has been a presentation all along. My version of ambition is a form of entertainment. It’s my debut. My public pursuit to prove.
Proving is a sport to me.
I’ve been awarded so many medals at this point that their shine lacks luster within their dusty storage. All of these years, and I just store the medals anyhow.
Did I die?
Or did the idea of me needing to accomplish wither?
Whatever it is, it’s ghoulish.
My ego is concerned.
My soul is weirdly at rest.
Being self-employed amplifies your relationship to achieve.
It calls upon your anxiety to share. To create unnecessarily. To be cool. To do this collab. To be invited to the table. To make the god damn table.
Splinters in my entrepreneurial hands, they feel like dropping carpentry as an offer.
The offer is me. I’ve spent so much time building anything except myself.
And just like that…spirits lift the veil, and my mental abode becomes haunted again. Deadly hushed with only the breeze reminding you of sound. Like I said, it’s this type of quiet that makes you really question your drive. Who is really behind the wheel?
Deciding to drop your own performance awards you no applause.
You get no likes. No reshares. No views.
You fucking view yourself.
It’s calming.
It’s so odd.
It’s unimpressive.
That’s the best part.
It’s July, and I’ve been an underachiever.
The exploration of the bare minimum is enticing. It revives me more than anything I’ve ever tried to sensationally capture in the cemetery of my awards.
Something indescribable stirs in you when you realize your motivation may have just been a badge of honor. It’s empty. It creates light. It makes you smell roses on your walks and carve out space for depth. You see the sky differently. You feel. You feel.
I need you to know that motivation can be a barrier to you just being yourself.
Ironically, the more I’ve been leaning into this departure of self, the more I’ve approached this life with more ease. A stronger ability to just do something without over-analyzing it, questioning every thread of it.
The next time it appears that your well of motivation requires fulfillment, look once more. Peer into its hollows. Let it just be. Let the rest of summer just be.
I would love to know what you think about the idea of motivation sometimes being a performance. A conditioned neural network for acceptance, belonging.
It boggled me for days. I’m still processing it myself.
Thank you for reading this. “Cross Your Mind” by Shelly played on repeat through this piece. A cold matchacano sat next to me, pouring its l-theanine into my achy ability to write again. I’m writing again. That’s a good thing, I think.
꩜
Sierra
꩜ THE PERSONAL BRAND DIARIES ARE RETIRING ꩜
The subliminal shift fan-favorite audio course is closing. The call to make more space (especially with this whole motivation is covert performance for me thing) is asking me to simplify. To streamline. To get weirder. To question. To let go.
PBD is an audio course (transporting you via a private podcast) that gives you a lifetime of permission to truly create your way in the interwebs. For the digital creator, the human who went full send into business, and then went Oh shit, I need to get back to me again.
I’ve come to discover that you’re not building a personal brand, but building a deeper, truer relationship to yourself in public. This is the most fascinating thing to me in the personal brand sphere- not the offers you create or the feminine funnels. The way you shapeshift when you stop feeding the comparison cycle. The light that dares to shine when you stop asking for it to be seen through metrics.
It’s pure magic, this ability of yours to be yourself online.
Very few risk the danger.
I would be honored to guide you in loving the threat of it all. To find your voice in your work. To encapsulate the tools needed to create with freedom, with confidence.
Tomorrow (Monday) is your last day to access the most chic on-the-go creator mentoring. The Personal Brand Diaries is expiring, along with me. Let’s bring flowers to her funeral.
Can’t wait to see you inside. To watch the way you audaciously love your work again. To fall head over heels for showing up (crazy, right?) This is your ticket to that type of tango. May you allow yourself to dance with utter liberation. PBD is 20% off and offers a payment plan option. The closing sale ends Monday ______________ ꩜
Relating deeply to this….just dropped the performance of my fancy job. Been dropping more of the performance as the years go by. Certainly makes you feel like a societal deviant in some circles! Underachieving is beautifully disorienting….
Love this! I’ve been underachieving in July too. It feels so strange. I wrote a job application today and one of the questions was what do you want to achieve in the next 3 years. Health ♥️. I don’t aspire to manage the company and rule the world, thank you 😂