🤪 Here's to the messy, the chaotic, the imperfect.

Or: how I need a space to ask the questions - especially the ones without the answers.

Photo by Tim Marshall on Unsplash

It feels like everyone has the answers - how can that be?

Everywhere I look - my email inbox, my Instagram feed, my LinkedIn… everyone is crushing it. From their breezy summer adventures to their work milestones. Solutions to my parenting woes or answers to my productivity. Reporting on all fancy parties in Paris or adventures at the lake. Even vulnerability posts that feel weirdly performative.

Of course I know that’s not reality - I know everyone’s lives are messy and imperfect.

But it’s getting really hard to find a place where I can see any of that. Or share it.

Where did my space go for the insecurity, the indecision, the messiness of it all?

It’s why I’ve always loved blogging … and OG Twitter. Those were two places where I could toss out imperfect thoughts and ideas and find my people. People who were also striving to just figure it all out too. Even Substack now is a machine filled with more people and more answers.

It’s not wrong or bad - I love seeing all of the ways people’s passions and talents and expertise are find a way to the world without intermediaries. But nor is it really the thing that fits the need of an old school blog.

And so, for the past couple of years, I’ve struggled to find my voice, because I don’t know where to share it. I live in the mess. In the in-between of neat and tidy. It’s what I’ve always written about.

Perfect has never been my muse. I find equilibrium boring (also, as we learn in science, it’s an illusion).

I am a deeply imperfect human. I am short with my parents and I get frustrated with my daughters and I snipe at my husband. I don’t call my friends nearly enough and even though I want to live according to these values I say are so important, most days I’m too exhausted to do anything but crawl into bed and pick up a book I’ve already read 4 times.

I am constantly terrified that I’m a failure and a fraud at this founder thing - that I should have tossed in the towel years ago and gotten a well paying job so I wasn’t so constantly worried about money. I worry my family gets the worst bits of me at the end of the day. I worry that I’m doing all of this wrong.

But where does the messy live these days? Where we ask questions without fear of judgement, where we offer no definitive answers, but support and suggestions.

It’s worse because when you’re a builder, you’re also its Chief Cheerleader. The person telling all the people why your thing is quite literally the best thing since sliced bread.

But my way is not to tell, but to show. To build products that do the talking for me. But what do when you find yourself building in a space where, for every answer you discover there are 3 deeper questions behind it?

For me, you keep digging. You keep asking. You keep building.

Only now, that’s not enough because suddenly, after building in a wide open space for 5 years that no one wanted to acknowledge let alone touch, it is now one of the hottest/competitive markets.

Which ultimately is fantastic for everyone - because finally we have a market and consumers will have choice.

But in the moment - all I can see are Instagram ads, emails, press… all confidently saying how this thing solves all the things.

So I find myself needing to find my voice again. Yes for the company, but more just for me.

Because I believe in messy and I think a lot of others do too.

I want to find a space where messy is okay. Where it’s celebrated. Where we don’t try to sweep the chaos under the rug and reach for a glass of wine. Or worse: where we think we can successfully solve it.

Again, maybe it’s the scientist in me, but chaos is just the beautiful reality of life. It’s the striving for the equilibrium … the making it seem like that’s the goal, that’s giving me heartburn.

Even this post should probably be edited or cut down and cleaned up.

But lesson one of Club Messy: real is better than perfect.

Allez.