The Door Opens
On performing, unravelling, and finding the person underneath
The door opens, and I’m standing there smiling.
Hi… Welcome I’m Em!
You look around expecting to see an office, but instead you see a forest floor, moss, grassy areas, and quite a bit more.
I smile: “You were expecting an office? Nope... not with me. Come in.”
You walk through the door, and see the tails of three small raccoons running around, with the tails of a trenchcoat tripping them up sometimes.
The Performance of a Lifetime
We are always performing a version of ourselves. No matter what we say, or do — it doesn’t fit perfectly and neatly into a structure that makes sense for everyone.
We’re at a point in life where things are just awful. And the trenchcoat is slipping.
The thing we piece together, the way we present ourselves online, is changing. Templates, toolkits, structures and solutions presenting things in the “best way possible” — I want to break that down. Because the cost of trying to be someone you’re not isn’t just exhausting. It makes you believe that’s who you’re supposed to be.
We’ve been assigned a task list. Stats we’re meant to hit. And the judgement continues from there. We’ve gotta LARP being a business owner:
Be productive.
Be organised.
Show up online.
Succeed with every single client.
Have 10k months.
It’s exhausting. And tiring. AND if you work even slightly outside the norm — whether that’s neurodivergence, health conditions, other responsibilities, or anything that means you’re juggling so much that if you ever sit and look at it... you shock yourself. And go: oh. That’s the noise constantly happening.
After the last two years of self-discovery, the trenchcoat can’t stay on anymore. It’s not who we are. We are complex humans constantly fighting between two kinds of time — the time on the calendar and the time in the body. The schedule says produce. The body says I’m grieving, I’m changing, I’m overwhelmed, I’m alive.
Your existence isn’t work and life. It’s life. Your whole experience, everything that you do, is one person living within an environment that is forever shifting.
Taking Off The Trenchcoat
I put the proverbial trenchcoat on from a young age. Male. Man. Masc. The label assigned to me.
Over the years, I’ve picked up many other labels. Neurodiverse, Autistic, Sensitive, Perfectionist, Partially Sighted, Blind, Disabled, Marketer, Business Owner, Entrepreneur, Notion Consultant, VA, OBM, OBM-lite, Simplicity Specialist, Non-Binary, Ace, Trans...
Some I took myself. Some were given to me.
There are many layers, and they’re rich and complicated, and they’re also not the full story. They’re the coat.
Now... I actually like trenchcoats. I bought a gorgeous green one recently, and it was exactly what I wanted — except I’m in the South West of England, and it’s always raining. So it’s not quite fit for purpose all the time.
And that part — “not fit for purpose” — is where I want to start.
Because, these are constant conversations I’ve had with clients over the last 10+ years, whatever label I added to my business (aka branding). A common path appeared.
They were trying to solve a problem with the labels. They believed that the trenchcoat they were wearing... was them. That IS who they were supposed to be.
They needed to wear this trenchcoat and NOT be unproductive, disorganised. They needed to do business and life right.
They needed a system to get more organised. A method to get things done. A set of steps to fix what they were doing wrong.
They were always the problem. The person inside the trenchcoat didn’t match the outside.
Looks at the dress I’m wearing... and remembers the most uncomfortable jeans I used to force myself into. Yeah. I feel that.
That feeling of trying to be somebody, something, that isn’t you. Something that at your core felt a little bit weird. But everyone else is doing it... so you gotta do it too, right? Just keep playing the role of business owner... and success will just appear.
The Person Beneath The Trenchcoat
I believed all of this myself. I lived the experience of trying to be someone I’m just not. Literally.
I built delightfully productive systems. I learnt how to use tools and tech to support me and other clients. But the tech got so much attention that I had to ask — what was it actually doing?
So I looked at what it actually did. And I shifted — from the tool, from the person, to the relationship between the two.
Notion made me see my information in a way I needed for it to make sense — in a time where tools like Asana and Trello had nothing but their default views. It gave me the opportunity to design my work exactly how I needed. Designing my entire environment to fit me. Not the other way around.
Instead of working to “fix” what was wrong with the person inside the trenchcoat, I could shift to actually asking: what does she want? What does she need to succeed in a world that doesn’t quite make sense for how she shows up?
And that’s when things change.
It’s not about what’s “wrong” with us. It’s about what we’re orientated to. What we look at, what’s loud and screaming and draws us in. What makes us do the things we do. Why we do them. Not why we shouldn’t... but why we do.
Returning to the Forest
Smiling as you look around, glancing at the forest, still not entirely sure.
As you glance back to me, I can sense your body tensing slightly... waiting for The Conclusion. The Pitch — promising I can “fix everything for you.”
And yes... I’d love to chat about your trenchcoat sometime. But right now, just sit with this for a moment.
What do you want?
The forest isn’t going anywhere. Neither am I.
Written in the same key: https://autside.substack.com/p/shethey-possibly-appearing-time-permitting
❤️😊