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Personal backlash. I saw the phrase on Threads and nodded vigorously at my screen.
This woman got it! Courtney gave a name to the defining phenomenon of my year.
2024 was a year of realizing Present Me desired a different life than Past Me thought she wanted. This was not a fun realization. I resisted it as recently as this month, when a coaching session ended with the coach asking, “What would it look like to do this the Taylor way?”
I’m answering my coach’s question through this last piece of 2024, sharing themes from my personal backlash. These are the sites of this year’s rebellion, resistance, and reframing.
Coherence
I’ve always oriented my life—and career—towards making sense. My first business was a brand strategy company, after all. I defined success by how well people understood me and my work, and I achieved this version of success.
People knew (and still know) me as the self-care woman. Book deal. Check. Inbound requests for speaking engagements. Check. Podcast. Newsletter. App. Check. Check. Check.
I could hang out here, mixing and remixing self-care ideas until I draw from Social Security—bold of me to assume the social safety net will still exist by the time I retire!
There’s just one problem: it bores me. I’m bored when I don’t feel like I’m learning, and I’m bored when I try to limit myself to being one thing.
So I stopped trying to make sense. Let me be more honest. I’m trying to release this desire to make sense. (I posted a new one-sentence “summary” of my work on my homepage last week 🙃). Baby steps. This year, I talked about the topics that interested me, from Beyoncé’s Alliigator Tears to getting ideas off the ground to career frameworks, and I didn’t force all of my offerings to serve the same person.
If the number of sidebar conversations I’ve had about my inspiring (their word, not mine) portfolio career and the numbers in my P + L are any indication, I think being “incoherent” is working.
My relationship to doing
I’m a prolific person. When my husband, a night owl, wakes up on Saturday mornings, he always asks, eyes half open, “How many rabbit holes have you fallen down so far?” And I relay the academic discipline I just heard about, the three ideas for books I have, and the visual brand I developed for a side project, which awaits his creative feedback.
Doing the most is my natural state, but I’ve held back because of the aforementioned fear of not being coherent AND the fact that I’ve talked so publicly about self-care and burnout.
Am I promoting hustle culture if I own my prolificness? Am I pushing people towards burnout if I tell them I believe action and experimentation are two of the most potent portals for self-discovery?
I know so many lifelong learners, myself included, who over index on reflection and the idea that the only way to rest is to do nothing.
This year, I’ve been most re-energized by creating things myself and making spaces for people to do their own creative work. It feels exciting and necessary in the way that talking about self-care used to feel for me.
And I don’t think my preoccupation with action is necessarily at odds with the way I talk about self-care. If self-care is listening within and responding in the most loving way possible, being prolific is its own form of care for what my new therapist described as my “extremely active” mind.
The gazes
There were several points in 2024 where I realized I was orienting my work towards an audience I would not put on real pants and leave my house for.
Like why did I write LinkedIn posts talking about leadership to managers who could be in a Dilbert comic? I work with leaders who are skeptical of mainstream approaches to work.
And what was with me being so careful about what projects I mentioned and when, as if the people who engage with my work cannot understand the concept of a person doing more than one thing?
Seriously, why did I try to temper my interests and dampen my wide-ranging enthusiasm? It’s not even a good business strategy because I don’t get on well with people who are too cool to care!!!!
Here’s a shortlist of gazes I now consider within my body of work:
- The Black gaze
- The nerd gaze
- The creative gaze
- The “feel too much” gaze
- The collectivist gaze
- The lifelong learner gaze
- The appreciator of beauty gaze
- The “I’ll do it my way” gaze
- The craver of connection gaze
Specificity brings more freedom than palatability does.
Looking ahead
What can you expect from me in 2025? The unexpected!
More collaborative projects. More in-person gatherings. More limited edition offers and experiences.
More doing it the Taylor way.
