devotion

Some things I learned and was wrong about in 2024

Katy Papineau

I’m very sick right now and sitting in bed thinking about what I learned this year (spoiler: eMoTiOnS). While I don’t write much here anymore, I do publish regularly at Milky and Moth Fund, and enjoy this prompt enough to briefly pop my head up to share a basket of learnings I collected in 2024. Thanks for listening and hope you’re all staying warm :)

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Do some scribbling.

• Every lesson I’ve taken to heart has been written about — it’s how I figure out what I believe and discern what in my head is a thought vs. a feeling. It took me a long time to get into journalling because I didn’t used to feel comfortable being honest with myself on the page. I think I’ve re-learned this lesson every year to a deeper degree?

Taking care of yourself is P0. Communicating your needs to the people who love and support you is P1. Ultimately, you are responsible for your own happiness.

• What I know I need to be happy: human connection, to express myself creatively, intellectual stimulation, to feel in my body, and to be continuously pushing out of my comfort zone. I’ve come to recognize the telltale signs and stages of my slipping away from the things that make me, me, and am now a staunch defender of them.

• Knowing how much you’re willing to change yourself and what changes would be meddling with what is core to you is essential to doing anything with others without becoming hopelessly lost and resentful in the process. These core things are values!

• Spend the time to find a coach who understands you and proactively speaks their mind, note who continues to show up as a mentor as your status waxes and wanes, and ask your people to give you what you need (the shame subsides, I promise).

• You can also just give yourself love and care — it doesn’t need to be contingent on how “good” you are. A shortcut to being less critical of yourself is to picture yourself as a little kid. How would he/she feel as the receiver of your inner monologue?

Being critical and pushing back against the world is an act of ego self defense.

• What are you trying to prove, and is this even the person/thing you really want to prove it to? It can feel like you’re constantly under attack when you’re not honest with yourself about what your true motivations are in every interaction and goal.

• Accepting situations in front of you without running away from what they reveal about yourself is hard. Emotional ambiguity does not need to make you anxious!

Silence is not rejection and attention is not love.

• The way that you relate to people is something you can change. Spending a lot of time with people who are secure in themselves rewires you brain by osmosis. You will be surprised by how much your world shrinks when you feel validated as you are.

• Deeply getting to know the person you have always been instead of endlessly reinventing yourself is “how” to stop seeking validation from everyone around you. I love the title of David Lipsky’s DFW biography for this reason: “Although of Course You End Up Being Yourself.” Jenny Slate has a great tweet about the feeling at the beginning of this process: “As the image of myself becomes sharper in my brain and more precious, I feel less afraid someone else will erase me by denying me love.”

You don’t need to be perfect. You’re good enough as you are and your feelings were never too much. Rooting yourself in the world is a beautiful process, savor it.