Doing & Being

Saturday, 8:23am — February 19, 2022

Good morning, happy #piscesszn, & haaappiest of Saturdays from Denver Central Market, where I sit in the corner of the big, open seating space shared between vendors. The sun has been up for almost an hour, and to kick start the day I decided to get out of the apartment and head over to this original, fav local spot to get a coffee matcha latte as a lil’ treat/incentive to do my taxes, #fun.

Our brand new, beauuutiful office at work finally opened two Mondays ago — have gone in a few days so far and even though hybrid attendance won’t be “required” until March 21, I actually… love going in? Most days no one else on my team has been there – however, there are other sales friends who’ve been going in who’re just on other teams – but it’s been so, so nice. Crazy to think that nearly 2 years ago, nearly half(?) of the country/first-world got emails that they’d be required to stay home for 2 weeks… and here we are. At the time, I was living in Dallas, all my friends were people I met through work and worked with every day – and thank goodness that Ezra, my roommate, was also a coworker – so we both had someone to talk to about our days, jobs, deals, work place “tea”, etc etc haha. I dunno about y’all and other kinds of jobs, but I personally thought “oh my god, how am I going to sell while home alone?? with no energy of the sales floor?!”; was all but certain that my performance would be awful during those two weeks but alas, it was “just two weeks.”

TL;DR — clearly we’ve all made it this far, and don’t get me wrong… there have been times over the past 5-8 months reading emails about impending “Return to Office” dates where I was just like “….bruh, I do not want to spend my morning time doing my makeup (which my skin hates, and it takes half an hour); going out to my car in 17 degrees & then sitting in 15 minutes of traffic (very spoiled that it’s only 15 minutes but still… time out of my day); having to make cold calls in front of people again (I used to be really good at cold calling, but learning how to cold call for a new product/company when you’ve never been around other sales people in-person to hear/learn how to do it is anxiety inducing, esp. when you became “senior” remotely and now people in the office want to “hear how you do it” — LOL, y’all, I do not do it… I should, but I yam a Datadog-cold-calling-noob, hahah); and, don’t even get me started on how we have to pay to park… Denver leadership is working on getting that changed so ya girl has faith but still — definitely an irritant/deterant, haha.

Alllll that said… while we’ll only be “required” to go in ~3 days a week, kinda thinkin’ I wanna go in every day?

Obviously everyone & every job is different, so would not expect these to be “good reasons” to anyone else, yet — for me, the conclusion as to “why” so far include reasons like:

• Separation of work space & home space
• Weekday mornings require structure <> weekday evenings require structure = good
• Less [personal] distractions that detract from my feelings of “doing a good job”
• Getting ready makes me feel like a “person” (..not the best way of putting that?)
• Friends & coworkers & leaders exist outside of my computer! Physical cues! Yay!
• Better work-life integration — have definitive, physical spaces to fulfill different needs/sides/strengths/opportunities fit for my personality; the relatively ambitious, interpersonal, driven “Capricorn/Aries” self who wants to accomplish things at work (very much “doing“) ; and the more mellow, creative, social-but-solo, intrapersonal “Pisces/Aries” self outside of work (when done right, this is more so “being“)

That segways pretty well into what’s been top of mind for me the past… well, for a while– but what I’ve been trying to keep in mind every day going forward this year; balancing “doing” and “being”. Between the times where vaccines rolled out and Omicron popped up, life was going 100mph. Pre-pandemic, that was probably normal for a lot of us — definitely was for me, at least. Without thinking too much about it, I allowed my social life to ramp up to 10/10 and week after week, I felt my resentment building towards work (and the world)– which I simultaneously felt guilty for, given all the opportunities & support I felt I’d been given from my work environment thus far. I didn’t want to admit it, but the heart knew (in a realistic sense, not an idealistic sense) that only my actions were responsible for my feelings of resentment. T’was not a fun pill to eventually swallow, lol

Between all the “doing” — being out & about, using my social battery, working 40 hours a week in a job that also requires a social battery (even remotely); I definitely learned the very hard way that “being” – which for me, looks like protecting my alone time & my quality of life / mental space – is not just needed, it’s necessary; and as y’all probably understand or can relate to– it was/is also difficult. You can’t just flip a switch to “balanced” one day and keep it forever, it’s not “achievable” in that way… it’s something that you have to be conscious & disciplined towards (on average) every freakin’ day, and that’s why it’s so stupid hard. For me, my issues with balance are very deeply ingrained in my habits, tendencies, anxieties, weaknesses, and overall social conditioning. Example: while having a cell phone to keep up with all my loves near & far is something I’m SO grateful for, being connected to everyone via a cell phone has always been a means of enabling me to say an immediate “yes” to plans without actually pausing to consider whether I really want to do XYZ activity, and/or if I really have the bandwidth to be doing XYZ activity. Pre-pandemic, I didn’t “do” alone time… I hated being alone because I always had FOMO which gave me terrible anxiety– plus (and this might seem nuts to people who don’t have this issue as much, haha– there’s gotta be some of y’all, right? maybe?), in hindsight; don’t think I’d ever really been “okay with” or remotely in touch with my body or inner-self. During the first 16 months of the pandemic, this eventually (and not without pain) evolved to loving my alone time – and thank god – but, I have to admit; there were many days last fall that I cried, seriously wondering if I was going to have to drastically cut out my entire social life so I could “get back to how I felt” during the first winter of the pandemic; unbothered, at peace, happy, like a good friend, a successful working person, etc. The struggles I have with things like this are no ones’ fault, not at all– rather, it’s just an area that I historically have struggled to respond responsibly to.

After finding my current therapist, I urgently & desperately expressed my need to “figure out how to balance both the social and non-social aspects of my life– the ‘lockdown anti-social-ness’ pre-vaccine phase of life (largely post-moving to Denver) was absolutely amazing, but obviously not realistic to maintain and would be “missing out” on the point of life; so how do I integrate the solitude of the past with the social demands/desires of now & the future” — basically, how tf do I (or anyone) balance the doing & the being.

For a little context around “doing” & “being” — in a spiritual, existential sense; Doing is represented by masculine energy, and Being is represented by feminine energy– not male and female, but masculine and feminine energy. If you think about the most annoying, macho guy you’ve ever met– clearly he has an imbalance of masc/fem energy, hahah. Existing in a capitalistic society where we’ve been trained to believe that “doing it all” is what defines us and our self worth (and frustratingly, is also literally tied to our ability to live because living costs money)— we’ve all been raised in varying degrees to embrace our masculine; embrace the doing, the feel-bad-for-not-doing-enough, the feeling bad that we don’t have $X in our bank account, the if-I-just-work-a-little-harder-or-acheive-this-then-I’ll-be-happy, etc; further enabled by the addictive outlets that make space for comparison between us and another, which deepens the toxic cycles, habits, and stories we tell ourselves to be true about our inherent worth, our value, and our selves.

To take it even another step further– when we’re pre-occupied with all this extraneous stuff that doesn’t always make us feel “good”, how could we possible bear to “be”? To have to sit and ruminate on the things that hurt us, are scary, that we fear are truths about ourselves being failures or behind, etc? “No way, José — I don’t want to think about all that” is one easy way to respond, and I’m certainly guilty of that approach, but; it only continues to further drive the cycle of “do, do, do”, and “helps” (read: hurts) us by giving us a means to ignore the things we could/should deal with but don’t “want” to. Now, in all of our defenses– totally recognize & validate that the “right time” to dig into the shadowy parts of our thoughts, experiences, & feelings is not always now; after all, it’s advantageous to be in a space/environment where you feel safe enough to start doing the heavy work. Yet– if it’s weighing us down, or the habits we use to avoid our issues are hurting us (for me; unhealthy, addictive behaviors); what if we started to work through them, and eventually realize that hm… these shadows might actually not be so “permanently damaging”; yes, they absolutely are real experiences and some of them hurt more than anyone could ever imagine– and/but, they can be felt (with pain, but probably without literally dying), worked through, dealt with, overcome, and maybe even turned into a strength in relating & connecting with others, if not with ourselves and what our actual truth is? The days I’m too mentally pre-occupied with external factors, i.e. anything aside from myself, are the days I spend not a single moment being present in my own life– and those are the days and weeks that fly by in the worst way while also feeling miserable and never-ending, and I hate it. 🙂

Anyways — off my idealistic soap box. It’s part of being human, and what would life be without these experiences and lessons?

Tying it back; No matter our gender identity, having a balance of both masculine & feminine energy, the “doing” and “being”, certainly seems to be undoubtably vital and easily missed without intention in the world we live in today. Tried to google for definitions of this balance for reference but instead, here are some excerpts from various articles that each hold inspiring takes on “doing & being” :

“Doing mode involves thinking about the present, the future, and the past, relating to each through a veil of concepts. Being mode, on the other hand, is characterized by direct, immediate, intimate experience of the present.” – Mindful.org, The Difference Between Being and Doing

“Doing is what you do. It’s the actions you take. It’s the decisions you make. It’s your behavior and all its visible manifestations.

Being is who you are. It’s what’s underneath all of the doing. It’s your qualities, your thought patterns, and your conditioning. It’s the pattern of beliefs that you hold about yourself and your environment. It’s your worldview.” – Alex Carabi, Doing vs Being: The Two Levels of Change

“Doing
Doing involves taking action. While we are in a state of doing we are performing a certain action that has a purpose of gaining something. The state of “Doing” is outward-looking as it requires us to interact with our environment and other people in order to achieve a certain goal. It shifts our focus from ourselves to our surroundings, to other people and other elements in our lives. It is centered on the future and is driven by thinking.
In modern times, “Doing” is getting a lot more attention than “Being”, since it’s considered very positive to gain things, and add additional value to our lives, by performing actions that add that value. The western culture today puts a lot of emphasis on “Doing”. It’s important to keep busy, to be on our way to somewhere and to have a clear agenda on things.A constant state of activity creates more wants and needs, and in essence, it is a process that fuels itself, unless checked.

Being
Being is a state that takes us back to simple existence. This state is focused inward, and it involves greater awareness of our own being. This state is focused on the present moment, and allows reflection and thought of things that happen, rather than trying to affect the flow of events, and deliberately changing the outcome. All though the “Being” state is associated with passiveness, it’s not to be confused with laziness. The state of “being” requires work on our part. All though it is intuitive to reach it, the western lifestyle made it more difficult to reach. If you doubt this, just try to focus all of your attention on the screen in front of you, without thinking of something else, for 3 minutes. This difficulty exists because the state of “Being” requires us to actively monitor our thoughts, and exercise a certain detachment from our surroundings, while the modern lifestyle keeps us busy and always doing stuff.
Because the state of being is calm and reflective in nature, when we apply it to our daily lives, it may present new insights on topics and areas, which we didn’t quite see before.” – Ido Bar-noam, What is the difference between being and doing?

Oops… been a few hours & still haven’t done my taxes, lollll. Will be working on the above all year long & probably for the rest of my days, and there’s so much more to be pondered on all of it– but alas. Please hit me up if you have any tips or thoughts! Now, on to “doing” for a little bit — love y’all 🙂

❤ LP