The Present Gives

What Scarcity Still Tries to Teach Me About Enoughness, Uncertainty, and Being Provided For

It’s not uncommon in this creative entrepreneurship journey that I’m on for me to think about what’s next. And often, when I’m thinking about next, it’s not predicated on, if I don’t have a next, this is what’s going to happen.

But there are moments where there’s a tightening in my chest that feels like it’s mirroring the tightening in my pockets.

And fear creeps in, closely accompanied by ego, with scarcity leading the way, holding the banner of:

Red flag. Red flag. Red flag.

I’ve been on this creative entrepreneurship journey for a little over two-and-a-half years. It began out of a desire to lean fully into who I am everywhere I am, and to no longer live a compartmentalized life. A life where part of me was welcome in some spaces, other parts of me in other spaces, but the fullness of me felt as though performance was required in order for me to be present where I was.

Performing for work gave me a sense of certainty. If I could perform well, meet the expectations and outcomes of the people who were paying for me to perform, then they would give me what they had committed to give me for the performance. It was transactional, but it was predictable.

I knew that every couple of weeks a particular amount of money would drop into my bank account. I knew how that money would contribute to the family household. I could schedule things out, budget things out, account for vacation, travel, expenditures.

There was also a degree of predictability if my performance stopped meeting expectations. There would likely be a process. Feedback. A way to work me back toward what was expected. And if that didn’t happen, eventually they would find somebody else to perform for them.

Even failure seemed to come with a runway.

And that felt like certainty.

But there was never any certainty.

All of it was uncertain.

At any moment, anything could happen and all of it could go away.

And yet, in a performance orientation, when there’s an audience bringing you in daily to perform and committing to pay you to perform in that particular way, it feels like you have some sort of control.

I discovered in my own employment journey that this was absolutely not the case.

Nor was it ever.

When I stepped out of the nine-to-five and retired from allowing my performance to somehow dictate my worth, I also stepped out of the illusion of certainty.

And I invited uncertainty in as a daily practice.

A practice of confronting the reality that I simply don’t know.

Outside of the moment right now, I simply don’t know.

I don’t know what is to come. I don’t know who is going to come. I don’t know what’s coming next. I don’t know who’s coming next. I don’t know when the next client, the next relationship, the next opportunity, the next speaking invitation will arrive.

I know none of what will be.

And yet I trust that it will be.

Because that’s simply how alignment works.

And I offer this not from an affirmation absent of lived experience. Two-and-a-half years into this, I have lived two-and-a-half years of adventure in a way that I could have never imagined when I was performing for pay.

That being said, there are moments where I want to step back onto the stage, dress up in the attire that matches the imagination of the employer, and begin to put on the show that they could bear witness to and say:

It’s worthy of a consistent contribution to your bottom line.

And this happens regularly, because scarcity doesn’t show up in me as an abstract idea.

Scarcity has a memory.

Part of me remembers what it was like to be without housing, sleeping in my car, going into Home Depot, working part time just above minimum wage while supporting a child. Part of me remembers what it was like to get payday loans to pay off payday loans, to catch up on rent that was already behind and nearing eviction.

Part of me remembers the twelve different places I lived from kindergarten through twelfth grade as a result of the financial instability in my upbringing. Part of me remembers the patches sewn onto my jeans, the holes in the bottom of my shoes, the fake-it-till-I-make-it disposition I carried into a professional world that was looking for accreditation when I didn’t have what they wanted, but I knew I had what they needed.

Those experiences don’t only live in my memory.

They live in my body.

And because they still live in my body, some part of me is always trying to make sure I never feel that unsafe again.

So my mind activates.

It starts looking for ways to prevent my body from feeling a thing it has known so well, even if the circumstance and the environment I’m in are no longer the same.

I mean, I’m a long way away from sleeping on the floor in a room at my mother’s house. I’m a long way away from leaning back in the front driver’s seat of my two-door Saturn, trying to get some sleep before I went into my shift, put on that orange apron, and began to sell tools in the tool corral.

I’m a long way away from the payday loan that was paying off a payday loan that was acquired to pay the rent that was already behind.

I’m a long way away from those things.

And still, my body feels it like it was yesterday.

Or better yet, at times, like it’s right now.

So what do I do?

What do I do?

Well, when scarcity pulls up now, it’s an invitation for me not to be moved into action in an effort to prevent a feeling. It’s an invitation to embrace the feeling, to sit in the feeling, to rewire the relationship between my body and mind and say:

Actually, it’s okay.

Because whatever those days held, I made it through every one of them.

And because I made it through every one of them, I’m going to be alright right now.

These past two-and-a-half years have also been evidence that every time I’ve had a need, I have been met.

Not just financially.

Provision has rarely arrived only as money.

The resources have been abundant in so many different ways: conversation, people, affirmation. When I first started this creative entrepreneurship journey, I had a friend who owns a coffee shop who gave me free coffee every day while I was working on the business I was beginning to create.

There has been generosity that has abounded in so many different directions that I can’t even account for it all.

I am always provided for.

And so I have to confront, with curiosity, why scarcity still wants to move me.

And it’s in no small part because scarcity has not only harmed me.

It has trained me.

Scarcity made me resourceful. It taught me how to make a way. It taught me how to get real creative when there didn’t appear to be enough.

And some of those survival skills became strengths.

But strengths born in survival can keep running long after the emergency is over.

When I start feeling scarcity, I get real creative. And when I get real creative, I can find a way to make a way. And when I make a way, I often end up spinning something else up that then needs to be maintained.

And once it needs to be maintained, now all of a sudden it requires energy.

And I have to use that energy to keep that thing going, which means the things already going don’t get as much attention.

Is this true for anybody else?

Or is it just me?

I’m offering this reflection because I’m two-and-a-half years in and scarcity still shows up on the regular.

But unlike previous moments in my life, I’m no longer running from scarcity when it shows up in an effort to outpace it.

I’m turning toward it to learn from it.

So it can remind me of the parts of me I’ve yet to fully reconcile into the whole.

Into who I am.

So it can bring me back to the present.

So I can bear witness to the fact that I have what I need.

To know that in this moment, I am enough.

And because I am enough, I have enough.

I’m not saying scarcity is imaginary. I’m not saying money doesn’t matter. I’m not saying inequity disappears because I choose presence. I’m not even saying there aren’t moments where I wish money could simply be the solution.

What I am saying is what has continued to become clear:

The present gives.

Scarcity has a way of moving me away from the only place where I can actually receive anything.

It either pulls me into a future that is unknown or back into a past that is no longer.

But the present is where I can encounter what is actually here.

Where I can notice who is here.

What is available.

What is being offered.

What I need.

What I already have.

The present is where the source is.

Where abundance is.

Where all that I need for this moment can be found.

Which is right here.

Right now.

I know I’m not alone. And I know many of you, in and out of performative spaces, can connect with this particular feeling.

And when the spiral begins, it doesn’t have to take you down.

If you can turn toward it, it can bring you in.

Into a deeper relationship with who you are.

Inviting you to connect with the parts of you that have yet to fully believe that you are complete.

That you are enough.

And that you will be held.

Because you are part of something larger than yourself.

And you always have been.