That Time I Lost My Shit.
If you check out my brand’s IG and website, you’ll find a pretty polished version of me.
But that’s not the whole picture. It never is.
At the crack of dawn on the morning of the launch of our first major podcast and rebrand, my husband and co-founder Benjamin crawls into bed and whispers in my ear, “our website is live.”
Thirty seconds later I’m splashing cold water on my face and opening my laptop. Sure enough — there it is. The baby we’ve been working tirelessly to birth. And it looks pretty damn good, but wait. As I scroll, I find one issue after the next. Formatting is off. The desktop design doesn’t translate to mobile. The contact form is missing. And our domain isn’t linked.
WTF.
The podcast is already live and being shared, so I instantly try to rectify the situation but it’s 6am. Our designer isn’t picking up the phone, she worked through the night. On top of all this, I’m on day 3 of a green juice cleanse and the lack of solid foods only intensifies the realization that there’s nothing I can do.
A wave of emotion floods my body. I find hot tears stinging my eyes, generated by a cocktail of disappointment, anger, frustration and helplessness.
It’s all too much. I am officially losing my shit.
Benjamin thinks it’s cute when I’m Human AF, because it pretty rarely happens. He invites me to realize none of this is that big of a deal. I decide to remove myself from his chipper attitude, otherwise I might just punch him in his casual face.
I stomp downstairs and beat a pillow like a toddler. I need to let the energy move through me. As it does, I see the hilarity and absurdity of my overreaction. It’s just my inner perfectionist throwing a hissy fit. She needs a moment, but she’ll get over it. While she’s having her moment, I know well enough to refrain from the impulse to leave a scathing message for my beloved website designer, who has been wonderful to work with and who did the best she could with the time we had.
As I come back upstairs, Benjamin is holding our dog Serendipity, who is shaking like a leaf. “I think she feels you,” he says, the concerned papa. “Awww,” I say, “so sweet! Don’t worry baby, I’m okay — oh shit. Wait. Is that poop?” Sure enough, Serendipity is not shaking because of my temper tantrum. She’s shaking because a piece of poop attached to a hair is hanging from her butt, which we both instantly realize has been there since last night when she climbed in bed with us.
Perfect.
As Benjamin goes to remove the poop, I spontaneously decide to run a bath as a radical act of self-care. As I bend down to remove my sock, my fingers land in something dark and mucus-like.
“What the — !!!”
There’s some kind of vulgar excrement on my hand, except this time it’s not dog poop, it’s bird poop. In the 12 seconds I spent outside this morning, a bird must have shat on my sock.
Of course it did.
At this point all the stress has transformed into a divine comedy. Holding the nasty sock in one hand, Benjamin and I burst into laughter about the ridiculousness of all of it. Us launching a sleek, sexy, polished brand with language like “discover everything you didn’t know you wanted” while battling missed deadlines and different variations of poop assaults. Oh thank you life, for never missing the opportunity to keep me humble.
I climb into the bathtub and begin to breathe. As my nervous system slowly unwinds and my mind stops racing, I realize that the very medicine I am dishing out to others is the same medicine I need right now. That medicine is the ability to alchemize stress into surrender. Anxiety into gratitude. And poop into perfection.
Now that is truly “everything I didn’t know I wanted.”
#IAmBEQOMING
