Drip

The trials and tribulations of an identity expert in search of herself.

So i had minor procedure this morning. Dont worry, I”m fine. Just a little benign cyst. They just got it out of the way, like shooing a cat out of the driveway so you can backup faster when you’re in a hurry to drive down to the market and get some coconut water. 

Technically I was not under generalized anesthesia, but was for all intents and purposes completely unconscious.   

This story is also my not so subtle apology for the fact that I might appear slightly drunk today. The show must go on.

I persevere for the sake of art-marking, but I can be delicate like an orchid, which I had on my salad from Ayuwasca about an hour ago, which I ate one petal of but couldn’t bear to finish, and by delicate I mean I have a very sensitive vasovagal response–which if you don’t know what that is, the vasovagal is a nerve that runs the length of your body from the here to the here, and it is the nerve responsible for fainting, and that well in some people when there’s a trigger, whether that’s the side of blood or being dehydrated in hot, it gets tripped and you (tree falling)

I have a history of falling which is very entertaining after the fact and usually worries present company during. Here are the times/places I’ve

So I wasn’t surprised at all when I started to sit up out of the hospital bed and felt a little lightheaded. This is very normal. I know myself. If you wanna know how many times I have fainted, blacked out, passed out in my whole life, I cannot count them on both hands. I couldn’t even count them on my hands plus Alia‘s hands. I could even count them on my hands plus Alia’s hands plus maybe Cheryl‘s hands.

I have a lot of experience feeding. One might even say I’m an expert in the fainting of Shannon. When might even say I’m an expert.

Unfortunately, this is not a great job description that theater ship title, because I can write articles and share things on social media for no one other than self.

So they kept me longer: blood pressure every 5 mins,  (56/98 if you’re curious. I have always had a very low blood pressure, another reason why nurses look at me askance when I say I’m feeling fine to sit up. I wanted my blood pressure taken, it was only like 50/80, and the nurse looked at me and said “how are you sitting up straight right now?) 

For someone who is inclined to a fair amount of anxiety, my numbers make me look very calm.

So to prevent fainting, they decided they wanted to give me another bag of fluids. “You can get up and go to the bathroom once your bag is empty”

Wait, what?

I can’t

It’s already been two hours, I’ve had two bottles of apple juice, 216 ounce cups, 1000 mL bags for boots, and now they’re gonna give me another.

As you can imagine, I have to go pee. And they won’t get up because of the risk of fainting. I have to have more water before I can go pee but I have to go pee before my body will take any more water

“You can leave once your bag is empty”

Drip by drip. 2000ml

I faint a lot. 

My anesthesiologist just said “I recommended skipping your event tonight, but up to you. Just know it is like showing up to an event drunk, so make sure it’s not something you would worry about for your personal brand 😂. 

She works with a lot of people in San Francisco.

But her very real concern prompted a very real existential crisis…Who am I? Oh no not that again.

I am the preeminent expert on 2 stroke cycle engines for watercraft. 

What? No, I’m not that, but wouldn't that be nice.

I am a leading thinker on political voting reform. No.

I have a doctorate in mindfulness to enhance child academic achievement in public education. 

I am an expert on expertise. I wrote the book on book-writing. 

THOSE ARE ALL SUCH NICE AND TIDY IDENTITIES. Simple ways to be positioned in the world, as a self. Sure, those hypothetical people are also people, with families and quirks and bucketlists… but in terms of how they present who they are to the world, they have packaged them into nice and tidy… brands.

Well, fuck them.

I mean, no, good for them! In fact, I do this professionally myself: I help people and companies discover this very thing: who are they? How can we package your identity into a nice and tidy one-liner? I have to tell you: it’s quite easy. I “see” people and their essence and am great at articulating the nuance and truth of that. And even embodiment, business and brand techniques to help them become that self.

But for myself? I’ve been struggling all my life and resort to full on existential crisis about every 3-4 years. The question is always: who the hell am I? I can’t fucking see or say myself. It’s all too blurry, with no center, always a moving target.

I tried to hire someone to help me with this (I’ve hired many people to help me with this, from therapists to consultants to those more woo). One in particular was a very reputable consultant I hired to help me position my business – slightly different than myself but relevant nonetheless – and bless him, it was great advice:

“Hi. I’m Shannon DeJong, the founder of House of Who, a naming agency specializing in the the tech industry”. I mean, it’s true that much of my professional experience is naming for corporate and tech companies. 

So, by extension, I should be able to borrow this very marketable identity, and voila:

“I am an expert on naming in the tech industry.” Thought leadership, here I come.

That is not who I am. Anyone who knows me knows that that is not who I am. Yes, I’m an expert in naming and branding, sure, I can advice you on how to start up your own small business or creative agency, having bootstrapped my own from a single job to 7 figures (a stat I bandy about a lot because I think it makes me sound credible when I otherwise am confused on my value proposition). But it’s true: I have a lot of knowledge and experience in these areas. I make a fine consultant. 

I’m also a coach and consultant for individuals seeking to articulate and embody their most powerful authentic identity. I have a coaching program to take people through the process of both existential inquiry all the way through to becoming who they want to become—action plan, brand, putting up a website or whatever they want to become.

And also. I have a lifetime of spiritual inquiry and ‘personal transformation’ under my belt. I have dealt with depression, anxiety and mild biploar, have conducted years of research and self-experimentation on how to self-care and survive as a sensitive being with a sensitive nervous system in this world where we also have to make money and pay taxes and remember to buy toilet paper. I have always had a deep urge and longing to express something real, true, beautiful, meaningful and profound about what I find most startling about this life: the fact that I exist in the first place, the fact that life is simultaneously exquisite and exquisitely strange and I don’t know if Life is Suffering or if Life is Bliss and or if both are dancing cheek to cheek, laughing and merging and blurring and unifying in and out of an indescribabley sensual wiggle of atoms and energy. I am obsessed with identity and what it means to be Somebody and what makes a good life and how to satisfying our own needs with the needs of the world. And most of all: how to be in the marketplace and enlightenment at the same time, as if those two things were different they are not.

I’m a poet! I’m a seeker. I’m a real mccoy expert but what am I an expert on? Tell me how to summarize all of the above into a single sentence! Who am I and how do I be her and what do I do to be the best me possible to be of value to this world? And: do I even need to do anything to be of value, or can I be valuable just by existing? And can I be somebody just by being a Nobody?

Now you see why a friend of mine called me The Patron St of Inquiry. My best self is a self in existential crisis. That is my area of genius. I’m very confident about that.

So where does this leave me? Us, I mean, because if you think I’m writing about myself here, you have another thing coming. Oh - I”m sorry, are you one of those people who knows who are and are living it in perfect alignment day in and day out?

I was going to say something snarky but I’ll just acquiesce that, well, lucky you. But for the rest of us: who are we? Why are we here? And if we get answers, will it make a difference?

The conclusion I come to (when you’ve spent your life asking these questions you come to a point where you stop asking and just as Rilke said “start living the answers” and as you do, reflect back on your life and say “oh, ok, i guess that’s the answer.) so the answer I’ve come to is that there is only the answer you decide it is. At some point we stop spinning, stop asking, even stop being the answer, and we just exist. There is wholeness and arrival by the mere fact that this is here, just this eternal recycling of one self as the everything, and this one little dot in the big picture is a woman who asks a lot of questions and finds a lot of wisdom and then she’s be gone but she also wont.

Because she will have realized that she’s the dot and she’s also the Whole, and so the kaleidoscope changes colors but it’s all the same shards of glass shifting around in different configurations as time rotates on.  I might be a talented writer with a mediocre execution and a half-baked identity, but does that mean I haven’t lived to my fullest potential? Maybe I’ll never write the great American novel or become a thought leader or avant guard influencer. Maybe this is my greatest potential for this moment now, however messy and disorganized. Maybe this is our greatest potential for this moment now, however polarized and confusing`. Maybe we are already here, us, and maybe we will never be finished and shiny with all of our parts defined and placed just so, groomed and packaged for consumption. Maybe this is enough.