We did it gang. (Imaginary gang, reading my stealth blog). Friday-Saturday-Sunday at my first effective altruism conference. 1200+ people, maybe 5 friends, 15 acquiantences, many strangers.

Overall, I am proud of myself for how I showed up. I was friendly and engaged in 1:1s. I did 18 of them! And I cancelled ones that seemed less useful; I preserved my energy. I happily let myself leave early, I did not force myself to go to after-parties or dinners. I left at 2pm on Sunday with a feeling of success and gleeful escape. Some of the happiest moments in my life have been leaving things that have been draining to me. Leaving JessCamp early felt the same - a giddy permissioning, a feeling of agency and self-reliance, a thrill at accepting “I don’t want to do this anymore and that’s ok”.

Acceptance – I just can’t show up as fully as myself, as grounded and content, when I don’t have a great job, when I’ve been living at my mum’s for 6 months. I’m an enneagram 3w4 without a job – there’s a fundamental lack of the most important thing. But I’m really very close now. Good for me for going, good for me for getting closer all the time.

Why don’t I tweet this stuff, why am I posting to my stealth blog? I think it’s downstream of this feeling of having nothing to show for myself at the moment. I tweeted a lot when I was very excited about my healing-and-self-expression journey. I made a bunch of youtube videos when I was very excited about my creativity-and-self-expression journey. It is much harder to be publicly excited about my “getting-a-job” journey. But I am sure that, once I have a great job, the flood-gates will open again. I can imagine excitedly entering communities and scenes and online spaces with a new fervour. “Fusion Alex” hasn’t yet experienced actually having a job. I’ve had deep okayness, I’ve had a deeply soul-affirming job, but never both at the same time. Excited for the overlap.