Project Reflect: A Year of Transition and Self-Discovery
It was Monday, March 16th, 2020 when all bars and restaurants were mandated to close their dining rooms by 8:00 p.m., not to reopen again for the foreseeable future.
I worked in the restaurant that day, and I remember trying so hard to stay away from any last lingering guests.
My coworker came in on his day off to eat lunch with us and talk about the next few months, about plans, unemployment, and the main thing we all couldn’t get off our minds: the virus.
We knew it wouldn’t be a week or two that things would stay closed.
However, subconsciously, I knew when I walked out of those doors that day that I wouldn’t be back. I didn’t even know how to explain such a feeling. It was simply intuition.
The city emptied out almost as quickly as the news hit that we would be moving to a state of quasi-shelter in place. Those who could go freely went.
I had decided on March 1st that “so long as my lungs continued to work, I was going to use them.” I started a run streak, and every morning, I would run alone through empty streets.
I had wanted change in my life for quite some time. Despite various passion projects and academic endeavors, I never managed to shift in many areas.
It was a matter of being able to slow down enough to see clearly, and a life of constant motion and chaos did not lend for that.
Times Square, where I worked, did not help matters.
I had never seen New York so lifeless. Watching the world abruptly halt, and feeling a void of energy in a place that previously oozed adrenaline was powerful.
I started keeping a COVID journal and on March 25th, 2020, I wrote:
“Cold. New York was cold.
I couldn’t help but stare at it. Every day, I wanted to see another sign on another locked door. I couldn’t resist photographing myself in lifeless windows.”
After a few days, I made an Instagram highlight reel as a place to keep the photos. I didn’t really know what I was doing, but I wanted to be reminded daily that I still existed in a world where so much was disappearing.
At first, the photos focused heavily on my run streak.
I had a compulsion to run every day. For me, putting foot to pavement was the way that I could feel stability during such unforeseen times.
The runs were long and filled with thought. They were the only thing keeping me grounded.
I was recently sober, and while I didn’t miss drinking, I still had a need to have some compulsion. I wasn’t settled by my thoughts.
What was I doing? How could I apply passion and translate it to action?
“Where is the opportunity in all of this for me to grow?”
Documenting the beginnings of the run streak
August Laura, Spring, 2020
Avenue B, Spring, 2020
In late April, I took part in a study called Living Isolated which was conducted by a friend of a friend.
We had to photograph our lives during the new, challenging time.
I sent photos of many things, including my new ID bracelet, online communication, and piles of human shit on the street.
New York was aching.
I incorporated this photo and talked about my daily reflection in the windows of closed businesses.
Photo for Living Isolated
In the year of volatility, running and mindfulness were the only constants.
My friend Andy started a meditation group on Facebook, and I began attending his meditations every day after my morning runs.
In May, I participated in a 21-Day Abundance meditation with another group and then facilitated my own group for that same meditation. (Not leading it, just forwarding them daily.)
I was starting to be able to see life, and myself, from a standpoint of listening to my inner voice.
There was no time frame. There was no outcome. All that I knew of my old life was simply attachment, reliving a predictable set of events
Andy often read from the book Inward, by Yung Pueblo to start his meditations. I bought myself a copy.
fleursBELLA, East 11th Street
Shirt by Self Evident Project. Proceeds went toward COVID relief for members of the LGBT community during the pandemic.
Reflect: You can see Gem Spa in the background. The famous locale frequented by Abbie Hoffman, Allen Ginsberg, the New York Dolls, and others fell casualty to the pandemic.
I started a blog in April called Andee’s Tavern where I wrote about COVID and featured talented, unemployed service industry employees.
I always felt good when I told people’s stories.
I had come up with the idea for Get the FUCK Off the previous February, but I knew it wasn’t the right time to execute.
I focused, instead, on reading, learning, and honing my skills.
I started freelance writing. I joined Medium. I broke my opposition to LinkedIn. I continued to read several books a week.
I listened to Tony Robbins’s Unleash the Power Within on Audible and learned the valuable phrase “compress decades into days.”
I did.
I started being intentional with the public use of my voice. My writing became for all eyes.
The running continued.
Day 72 of my run streak
My quads looked great
As soon as New York City hit Phase 1 of reopening, I left for ten days to visit my parents.
I got hurt while running on an uneven stretch of road.
I couldn’t run streak any longer. Everything seemed hopeless to me because I had replaced my drinking with running.
For the first time, the training wheels were off. It was time for me to fly without a vice. I needed to be radically and unapologetically honest with myself.
Strength did not come from running every day. It, like alcohol, was just another distraction.
Photo on the last day of my run streak.
It was time to start healing, going inward, and letting go.
There was so much that was unsettled.
The images I saw in the windows changed every day, even though physically, I looked pretty much the same.
I lived in a tiny apartment with one mirror which I rarely looked in.
Before 2020, I never thought about what I really wanted. I just played a game in a rat race to pay bills. Over and over, I paid bills. I woke up every day, and I started repeating the same neurological program.
“I don’t know how to do anything else.”
I started noticing and healing my relationship with my body. I liked my body, but I never noticed the slight jabs I took at it.
In the early part of “reflect,” I often would speak negatively about my body. After a while, that stopped.
I started to see beauty in my life, and in every motion I took.
I applied for health insurance. I got my first physical in about eight years.
I got an eye exam and ditched my glasses. I hadn’t seen my eyes in so long, save for squinting in the mirror. I was tired of hiding them and tired of mask fog.
When I looked in the small apartment mirror, I started to fall in love with how my eyes looked. I looked into them as I would look into the eyes of a soul I cherished dearly.
Where had I been?
First photo without glasses in years
You get lost sometimes before you find yourself.
The city started to reopen, but somehow, I felt the virus made returning to work unsafe. We hadn’t had a vaccine yet. Also, restaurants could only be open at 25% capacity.
My job didn’t need me, so I stayed home.
I applied for various other jobs on LinkedIn but I didn’t really want any of them.
I continued with meditation. Andy’s group had become something quite special, and I looked forward to seeing the people there every day.
I connected deeply with many different people in various communities outside of there.
Road Runners Club of America opened up a series of virtual Level 1 coaching courses. I knew that at any other point in time, I’d have to travel and spend a lot of money to attend an in-person course, so I registered within the first hour of the course’s opening.
They sell out about as quick as the Brooklyn Half Marathon (one year it sold out in 26 minutes) so I took immediate action. Thankfully I did. There were only 30-something of us in the course with an endless waitlist.
Within a few weeks, I was certified as an Adult Distance Running Coach and also certified in CPR.
I didn’t know what sort of “career” I wanted to have, so I just did what I loved instead, which was helping others.
Flatiron, somewhere along Broadway. Summer, 2020
One of my biggest challenges in life has been confusing intimacy for romance.
There was some intense intimacy during COVID, and it was not always easy to navigate that.
I knew that in my previous lives, such confusion had led, in many cases, to extreme disruption.
It was my task from “The Stackers” of the universe to make peace with that and be able to love and be intimate with someone without expecting more from it.
Still, when you spend a year primarily physically alone, sometimes it becomes difficult to avoid thoughts about physical intimacy or romance.
I would sometimes insert such things into my “Reflects” as a way to express my loneliness and desires.
Too much?
Romance Sticker in Alphabet City
I also implied loneliness at times with music attached to “Reflect.”
“Almost (Sweet Music)” by Hozier was my most played song of 2020.
“Be still, my foolish heart, don’t ruin this on me.”
I heard this song in Mad Men. It’s a song from 1963 by Japanese artist Kyu Sakamoto. The lyrics are actually quite sad, but I did not know them at the time I posted this reflect:
Sadness is behind the stars
悲しみは 星のかげに
Sadness is behind the moon
悲しみは 月のかげに
Let us walk towards the top
上を向いて 歩こう
Don't spill tears
涙がこぼれないように
A lonely night walking while crying
泣きながら歩く一人ぽっちの夜
It was a year filled with new “practices.”
Things like “Morning Gratitude” filled the pages of my journals.
At times in mid-pandemic, I would force myself to write what I wanted 100 times to exercise my reticular activating system, but the most impacting change happened when I just practiced letting go.
Astor Place, Fall, 2020
After reading the work of Dr. Joe Dispenza, and listening to the late Wayne Dyer’s How to Be a No Limit Person, I became more and more convinced that the secret to success was to focus on what you want but not to be attached to how it happens.
The universe began to bring people into my life in unexpected ways.
I reconnected with my friend from undergrad, Ash, who is possibly one of the most motivational and influential people I know.
She became my mentor and taught me so much about the building blocks of business.
I have gratitude for her beyond measure.
Get the FUCK Off started being less of an idea and more of a reality because of her guidance.
Taras Shevchenko Pl, 2020
I began feeling the motivation to build the business bit by bit. I learned action causes motivation, not the other way around.
I also started taking on clients.
I wasn’t sure how to tie in every aspect of my voice, until one day when I started breadcrumbing on Instagram about the launch of my website.
A friend of mine wrote, “the universe is telling me this is a podcast and I’m vibrating in my seat.”
TURNS OUT the universe was also saying that to me, except it picked her to tell me in THAT COMMENT, rather than planting the seed in my already overworked head.
The Get the F*ck Off Podcast was born.
Get the FUCK Off launched a month later, following the election. It was the happiest day of my entire year, even happier than two weeks earlier, when I ran an impromptu marathon by myself, just for fun.
I stopped worrying about money and started focusing on connection.
I did an Instagram live with a friend who talked about times in her life when she had Post-Its all over her apartment.
She said when people asked her why she had a Post-It on her mirror, she asked “why DON’T YOU have a Post-It on your mirror?”
I put Post-It’s all over my mirrors.
They said things like:
“Money Gives You FREEDOM”
“There is ALWAYS MORE MONEY.”
“SOLUTIONS MODE.”
Manifesting Money, Fall, 2020
Money started coming more easily.
I no longer worried about it.
I was reminded of my abundance meditation series in early pandemic. Somehow, that training resonated with me so much more deeply months after I completed it. I finally understood what it meant. It blew me away.
I learned to renegotiate how I thought about life in so many areas.
All of it started with renegotiating who I knew myself to be.
I was a pro at this in other areas. I’d changed from being a cigarette smoker to a marathon runner. I shifted from drunk to sober, and from a sedentary misanthrope to a loving athlete. I was a born and bred Atheist turned spiritual being. My life was fluid. This was just another area that needed to be melted down.
Day after day, I reflected, and I took steps in the present moment.
Life was no longer “hard.”
Life was life. Life was cosmic. Everything was energy and happening for my greatest and highest good.
I was doing the work I was meant to do, using my voice and willingness to be vulnerable to reach the eyes and ears of others. It was remarkable how it all worked out.
Every reflection became emotional. Except maybe this one:
It started to get cold. 2020 was winding down.
It became an exhilarating rush to the finish, with all of us tumbling toward January.
I realized, after months of quiet, what the purpose of “Reflect” really was.
Alphabet City, Winter, 2020
Astor Place, Winter, 2020
August Laura, Winter, 2020
As I reread my journal entries from early and mid-pandemic, I realized that “Reflect” was about letting go of my expectations of who I needed to be.
It was about living in constant inner quiet, slowing down, and allowing faith and the universe to open doors for me.
It was about reconnecting with my body as a vessel for my spirit.
It was about love, honesty, intimacy, and connection.
It was about transition, for me, for New York City, and for society as a whole.
It was about closure. It was about rebirth.
I discovered through it that I was infinite energy, and my body was simply a vessel for my spirit to move along in the current of life.
“Reflect” was just that. Reflection.
One year after Monday, March 16th, 2020, I met a friend for breakfast to reflect together about our year.
We had texted one another “Good Morning” every day since that very first day, that Monday in March when everything changed.
On my way to meet him, I snapped a final “Reflect.”
I don’t know what happens next, but I’m not too attached to what it is.
If you can, reflect. It’s so powerful. So, so very powerful to allow yourself to look inside… and see.
Below is my final reflect from March 16th, 2021.
The caption reads:
“That is not you.
That’s a reflection
Of a body.
In a window.
You are consciousness.
No matter what your body looks like, or what resides behind the window, you exist infinitely as energy.
Reflect. #365.
I continue each and every day to reflect. I hope this inspires many of you to do the same.
Love and light. 💫
