Finding my lane

The prerequisite to staying in it

I have a post-it note above my desk that says “DO LESS.” I wrote it a few years ago as a reminder to observe my limits; a reminder not to promise more than I can reliably deliver without self-obliteration.

The “DO LESS” note was no doubt influenced by the pandemic and its resulting collective exhaustion. I read Jenny Odell’s How to Do Nothing in the spring of 2020, gasping¹ at each successive chapter that gave me permission to sit on the couch and observe the birds. She draws from many sources to connect that moment of attention as itself a small step toward anticapitalist political action. It’s a mindest that’s gained prominence as our society struggles to “return to” work, to constant production. Tricia Hersey’s The Nap Ministry comes to mind with her ethos of rest as resistance, as does the Great Resignation.² Trendy or not, doing less is my way of contributing to the world I wish to inhabit.

I think of that post-it note as another way of staying in my own lane. I’m using the “stay in your lane” phrase in a positive sense, meaning to stay within my capacity.³ After a brief internet search I now remember that the phrase has also been used as an admonishment, a way of silencing people without “proper credentials” who wish to speak on a topic. Although that’s an interesting issue, for now, I want to stick with the idea of staying in my lane as being a responsible choice to act within my capacity, to deliver what I promised. Because naturally, there have been times when I’ve taken on too much. Not only did it end up hurting me, but it’s caused harm to others as well.

One problem: staying in my lane requires me to know where that lane is.

National park trails make it easy to find your lane. This is the view from Harding Ice Field, Seward, AK. Minolta Hi-Matic, August 2021.

The car I’m leasing has “eyesight” camera technology that beeps every time the vehicle veers outside of a painted road line. But in the winter, the cameras often freeze up. It’s now familiar to start the car and see the “eyesight disabled” message on the dashboard.

It’s a bit startling.

That’s how I feel a lot of the time: like I’m trying to find my lane with no eyesight. But as a car driver, even when the Subaru⁴ cameras aren’t working, of course I can still see the lanes with my human eyes. I don’t need the camera to see the lane; the camera is simply a second opinion and a reminder to pay attention if my own eyes stray.

The difference with finding my internal lane markers, the limits of my capacity, is that so far I haven’t found technology that can double check my work. To my knowledge, nothing beeps at me when I take on too much, give someone too much, or say yes when I know I can’t deliver.

…But maybe that’s not entirely true. I’m starting to learn that there are some beeps; that I have internal alarm systems. It’s just that for so long I trained myself not to hear them.

So how do I find my lane? I’d say there are a few ways. Sometimes it’s an inner knowledge: taking time to listen to the voice that speaks from a place of security and not from a place of fear. That’s a great method when I’m in the kind of headspace to get to it. I can’t say it’s always possible.

More reliably, the best measures I have so far are taking stock of my core responsibilities and ensuring I can meet them. Those go into the buckets of home life, work life, and personal life. In those buckets are my tethers, the responsibilities I have to other people and things. My plants, my animal housemates. My clients and my coworkers. My chosen people. My creative work.

The moments I feel myself veer outside of my lane are when I realize I’m letting those core tethers fray or that I’ve neglected a responsibility. Sometimes it takes a while to realize. Sometimes it’s an immediate hit, like jumping up on the curb.⁵

For a while I didn’t think I knew what my lane was because I was looking to external forces to determine it. I was looking solely at other peoples’ reactions to my choices to determine whether I’d done the right thing. That’s where the car metaphor breaks down.⁶ Because when driving along typical roads, external forces do create the lanes. We drive on roads others have paved for us.

A better metaphor for the kind of lane I mean is a chosen route across open land. Fresh tracks on a powder run.⁷ It's not a preordained path (though that doesn't mean many others haven't traveled it before). All I know is that for it to be my lane, I have to delineate it myself. Having trustworthy people in my life as mirrors certainly helps signal when I'm going astray; those are some of the tethers I mention above. But in the end no one else, not even someone using patented Subaru Eyesight cameras, is going to know when I've veered off course.⁸

I’ll end by saying I’ve struggled a bit over the past few weeks to find “my lane” with respect to this newsletter. I notice that instead of feeling satisfied by the act of writing and sharing, I’ve sought external validation to determine where I think I should be. What that means is I’ve been comparing myself to established, professional writers, or otherwise to people with internet followings that predate their newsletters. Shockingly, I haven’t been stacking up too well in those comparisons. Substack’s business model of profiting off of paid newsletter revenue doesn’t help, though it’s not fair to bite the hand that provides me with a free blogging platform just because I’m not its target user.

I don’t have a resolution to share at this moment about what my newsletter lane is or will be. But I’ll try to remember why I’m doing this: as a grounding practice and as a way to connect with the people who choose to read it.

So on that note: thanks to at least two folks who forwarded the last post to people in Antarctica! This site doesn’t seem to track subscribers down there—I’ll put in a word with management. Fun (?) semi-relevant story: my first moment of advocacy was in fourth grade when I stood on a desk in front of the map on our classroom wall and (falsely?)⁹ convinced my classmates that Antarctica is bigger than Russia because it wraps around the back of the map too… I guess at nine years old I was already a baby pre-lawyer monster. You're welcome!

1. Perhaps due to limited lung capacity as I recovered from COVID? Jk.

2. This phrase still makes me lol, kind of like a societal version of Eeyore the depressed donkey.

3. The negative sense, saying to “butt out of it,” is fun too.

4. Whoops, outed myself.

5. Lol to the New Yorker making car metaphors.

6. Ha!

7. Uh oh, who’s bragging now?

8. This post sponsored by the Subaru Outback.

9. Not sure why I felt this disclaimer was warranted… fake news abounds.