I wish I could find a nice, neat way to describe all of the changes and all of the feelings I’m experiencing right now. It’d be great to present a clean narrative with a cohesive story line, and maybe an edge towards an ending or a conclusion.
But that’d be a lie.
Business is good, but I’m too busy. My heart is broken, but it’s mending each day. My mind is wandering, but things are decidedly moving in a direction that feels right, unraveling me and revealing how transient and entirely impermanent all of these choices are.
Sometimes, I’ll feel sassy as fuck, like I’ve got this under control. I want to write about being single and Tinder and drowning out sadness by meeting new people and what it’s like to be 28, to be reminded you’re desirable, and that keeping hope alive that someday you’ll collide with someone who isn’t afraid of you, your ambition, your baggage.
Sometimes, I’ll break down and cry over nothing at all. I want to write about heartbreak and burn down everything I’ve ever made and disappear from the internet and go sell flowers from a cart on the corner just so I can focus on finding, being, giving simple pleasure and joy away in exchange for stories.
I’m working, but I’m not fighting. The fight is gone right now. I just don’t have the energy.
Some days, I think that I want to have no heart, but I’ll be damned if I’m careless with anyone else’s. Others, I want to feel so deeply that there is no question which step I should take next.
Turns out, I contain fucking multitudes.
I want to write about new experiences and trying to parse and synthesize everything I’ve learned over the year. Years.
And perhaps the strangest thing of all in the midst of everything is an odd, comforting realization – that I don’t want to run. This is a life that feels in integrity, at least for now. This is a life that is true for me, what I need, what I think I want.
Funny how in the midst of confusion is where I feel most secure.
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Dusti Arab, Fractional CMO
And the founder of the reinvention co, a marketing consultancy specializing in working with personality-driven companies with small teams.
Intense, fun, and relentlessly practical, Dusti understands the lives of small business owners are deeply intertwined with their businesses, and if their marketing is going to be sustainable, it can't get in the way of why they do what they do. (And honestly? It should be fun so they actually want to do it.)
She is the host of Referral Worthy, a podcast for small business owners ready to go from "best kept secret" to the go-to name in their niche.