She Believes In Looking Back.

Sunday Harvest. March 12, 2023

When it comes to the execution of personal visions, ideas and endeavors, I have tried, and failed, far more than I have succeeded. I have started, and stopped, given up, and quit. The very first idea and endeavor I can remember starting, and quitting, I started in college. It was called Infinite Possibilities. The details are a little hazy, but overall the idea centered around providing services and solutions for the planning and execution of third party projects. I can’t recall why I quit this one, but I do remember thinking about how long of a business name Infinite Possibilities was (21 letters to be exact) and that I needed something a little more playful, catchy and less time intensive to type out. The next thing was I. Chronicles. I, for Isis, and Chronicles as in archives. This was a Tumblr page, and my first online journal/blog. The idea was encouraged by my then boyfriend who was one of the first people, besides my mother, to support and encourage me as a writer, and storyteller.

After I.Chronicles came Be Happi, Live Free. Happi spelled with an “I”, instead of a “Y”, because the domain BeHappyLiveFree was already taken. This was a self-motivation website through which I shared personal journey stories, and anecdotes, and encouraged myself, and others, to keep striving and pursuing life’s dreams, and goals both professionally, but especially personally, because even back then I knew that for me, a job alone was not enough to satiate my inner stirrings. Fast forward a year or two, which puts us at about 2010 or 2011 and there was This Is The E dot com. The concept was fairly similar to Be Happi, but with this endeavor I began developing talks and conversations, specifically for college age young adults. Conversations centered around personal, professional, and soulful growth, and development. I let this one go because I couldn’t get the financial support or traction needed to execute the full vision, and scale of events. Finally, I brought the domain name Eniafe Isis, incorporated it, and tried for some time to be a life coach, of sorts, which brought me to the next endeavor, I Amplify.

I Amplify was the vision I really invested in, worked with a strategists on products and “coaching” offerings, a developer on the website, and I did, for sometime, have a couple of “clients”, but I never got the hang of charging for these services. Around this time I was slowly beginning to discover that internally, I was a mess, and my inner turmoil began to affect my ability to show up for others, and coaching didn’t feel right. I felt like a fraud. After I Amplify, I quit envisioning for a while. Fast forward through some pivotal life happenings, which included multiple heartbreaks, leaving my job, and becoming a freelancer, a very painful hip flexor injury, moving from New York to Los Angeles, my first severe bout with depression, and the death of my father and great aunt, and here I am, today.

*deep breath*

I lay all of this out as evidence of just how non-linear this journey has been. I can in fact recall a piece I wrote a few of years ago for a “book” (really more so a collection) — a currently paused endeavor. The piece reads:

“this journey is not linear. it possesses no straight lines. was not walked with one foot neatly placed in front of the other, its endings have not been precise.

this journey, albeit full, is uncertain, roughly drafted, and unrefined. more backwards than forward, premature decisions, and lessons gone awry. leaps preempted by months of stagnation, days of weighted steps, nights spent drowning in tears and spirits, and dawns spent in mourning.

this journey is one of fallen pieces, fractured parts, and breaking through to recovery.” — ẹniafẹ isis

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I reflect, write, and share these pieces today as a reminder to myself, and others, that sometimes growth will feel like a slow walk up a steep hill, and you can’t find your footing. Sometimes forward will feel more like backward, and progress will consist of more stopping than starting, and more quitting, or pivoting, than following through, and completing.

In April of 2021, I began writing mantras to myself. I wrote them over, and over, until they filled, from top to bottom, journal page, after journal page. One of these mantras reads:

Please, don’t give up on yourself. Don’t give up on yourself. Don’t give up on yourself.

One of my many truths is that you can often find me falling, or looking back. Not because I’m trying to go that way, but because sometimes there are things there that I missed. Lessons I overlooked because I couldn’t quite grasp them or because I was moving to fast past them. Pieces of me I left behind because I allowed myself to believe they weren’t of value, only to find that they are my most prized possessions. And sometimes I fall and look back because this is just how the journey goes.

The visions I hold now I couldn’t fathom 10 years ago. But I hold them. And though the timing, and journey, isn’t what I imagined, or planned, it would be, I know that everything is as it is meant to be. — ẹniafẹ isis

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P.S.

I remembered a few more tries that missed: The Perspective Group, Free Gems (a podcast), Gazings (a newsletter).