liminal spaces
thoughts from a life-in-progress ✨
I remember how anxiety-ridden I was in my last semester of undergrad, so desperate to line something up for post-graduation. I had watched my immigrant parents go from the poverty line in my early childhood to middle class in my late teens, and I knew all the sacrifices they had made to put me through college debt-free—which I will be grateful for ‘til the day I die.
So I felt the pressure to have a full-time offer signed and ready by graduation to reassure my parents that no, they didn’t need to worry about me anymore.
Fast-forward 11 years and it’s my last semester of grad school and I felt that same pressure to have something lined up before graduation—hence all the artist residency/fellowship applications and subsequent rejections 😂
I’m not sure if it was because I wanted to start having cash flow again (the grad program was so intense that I didn’t have any time for client projects), or if I just wanted the reassurance that I had next steps, that I fell into the same place of anxiety I was in at 22. But then my coach asked me if I still had savings, and when she heard that the answer was yes, she immediately encouraged me to take the summer off (because again, grad school was non-stop intense) instead of hyper-fixating on setting up what comes next.
She told me she often finds that her clients come back with better ideas when they’re able to stay in that liminal space instead of rushing into what’s next. She gave me this definition of liminal space:
“Here we are between the familiar and the completely unknown. There alone is our old world left behind, while we are not yet sure of the new existence. That’s a good space where genuine newness can begin. Get there often and stay as long as you can by whatever means possible… this is the sacred space where the old world is able to fall apart, and a bigger world is revealed. If we don’t encounter liminal space in our lives, we start idealizing normalcy.”
So I took a notebook and my favorite fountain pen on my vacation to Japan and China and I journaled like crazy. There, I found a way forward that I was excited about: a balance of art work and client work—art work to keep diving deeper into myself and client work to keep me tethered to the outside world. But then I came back home to a slow summer with a slow inbox with almost no work coming in and had another bout of scarcity-mindset-driven-panic.
And I had to pull myself back into that liminal space, of accepting that I was going to be in this state of uncertainty for longer, that I was going to have to keep digging into our savings (which, regardless of how much financial security I’ve built up or will build up, will always feel so uncomfortable—I think that’s just deeply ingrained from my childhood).
So as always, I did a lot of digging and introspection, and realized:
The thing that I specialized in for the last decade—D3.js and bespoke, interactive data visualizations—probably won’t continue to feed me for the next three decades. So what are the skills I want to continue forward with (“update”), what are the new skills I want to gain (“enter”), and the skills I can remove (”exit”)?
(lol I’m way too proud of my enter-update-exit metaphor, I came up with it talking to Nadieh and I thought I was so genius)I worked real hard in my twenties, and it led to me massively burning out. So it’s probably a good thing that I’m forced to take it easy with a slow summer/fall (I spent August working half-days and playing Kirby with husband it was glorious).
I worked real hard in my twenties, and I’m now reaping the rewards from that.
That last point, I want to expand on a bit.
Some of the rewards I’m reaping from my twenties are really tangible: I prioritized financial security and it let me go to grad school debt-free. And others are simultaneously really intangible and also really invaluable, and have much more to do with the people I got to meet, work with, build a reputation with, befriend. And because of that, I was able to give a really personally important talk at my three favorite conferences (which has given me so much catharsis), I’ve been working on an article I’m so excited about with the fantastic Nightingale team for their next magazine, and I get to share one of my proudest data physicalization art pieces at the Information+ Exhibition this November.
All of these opportunities came because of the relationships, reputation, and trust I was able to build in the past. They’ve also taken a lot of my time this summer and fall, and I’ll generate very minimal income from them. And that’s probably the most important lesson this liminal space has taught me: I don’t want to evaluate an opportunity by only the money, the tangibles—because I think I miss out on a lot of good this way.
I want to evaluate and take on opportunities because they hit a good balance of money (because it’s important to get paid, but also not always), and those intangible rewards—because they let me articulate the current phase of my life, the place I want to go, the work I want to make next, the doors that they’ll hopefully open for me. Even if all of that means making less money in the short run.
(I also want to take a moment here to acknowledge the incredible privilege I now have to be able to de-prioritize finances in this way. And it’s important to me to put this out in the world because it’s a conscious step forward from the scarcity-driven-survival mechanism that has haunted me all of my life.) (I’m hoping to write more on this later.)
This liminal space has really felt like wandering around in the dark, accompanied by bouts of great discomfort (driven by my constant need to know absolutely everything) and re-re-re-minding myself to accept that discomfort and not knowing, pick a direction, and keep moving.
Which reminds me of one of my favorite lines/life lessons from a shoujo manga (a.k.a. Japanese comics for young girls) whose title I’ve already forgotten, roughly translated as:
If you have no idea which way is the right way, just pick a direction. That will become the right way.
💖,
Shirley
p.s. I swear romcoms and shoujo mangas have some of the best life lessons. My other favorite is from Chasing Liberty with Mandy Moore:
Ben Calder : So if you're scared, why do it?
Anna Foster : Because the things you're scared of are usually the most worthwhile.
It’s why I started public speaking.