In 2007, for a very brief period of time, I lived in a nunnery.
I had spent months in a hilltop town in India called Mcleod Ganj, the home of the Dalai Lama and thousands of Tibetan refugees. I was there, as I would be every summer for three years, getting over a pretty reckless relationship with someone I imagined back then to be the love of my life, but would later find out was a textbook psychopath.
So much of my life was in turmoil then that I arrived at the nunnery looking for answers. My ticket in was an article that I was writing for Elle magazine on Western women who had left everything behind to embrace Tibetan Buddhism. The story was later republished in Spirituality & Health, but at the time, it was my excuse for gaining access to these women and this environment, and trying to see if and where I fit.
I lived very simply back then. My worldly possessions consisted of a duffel bag full of clothes, about 200 books stored at my parents’ house, and a laptop and phone that I lugged around wherever I went.
Breakfast at the nunnery was served at five in the morning, after prayers. Since I was interested in neither the prayers nor the early rising, I often woke up late and missed breakfast. I showed up, without fail, for lunch and dinner—these were some of the best meals I’ve ever had, consisting of bread and soup. For most of the day, I played with the resident dog, talked endlessly with the nuns, and spent hours in my room, reading. The nuns went to bed as soon as it was dark, but I would lie in bed and read into the early morning hours. I read a lot in those days. I tried to meditate, unsuccessfully. I made a lot of notes. I thought about my life and future incessantly. I had met an American guy that I’d been casually dating and I spent hours debating whether or not to call him once my time at the nunnery came to an end. (I emailed, eventually. He had left the country by that point. We’re still friends.)
I could see the ways in which I fit so perfectly into the silence and the isolation of the nunnery, but it was also clear to me that I was a creature of the world. The noisy, crazy, bustle of cities fueled my drive and made me feel at ease. I knew, too, that I craved romance, a life to share with someone else, perhaps a child one day, a career that I could be known for. I liked the nunnery for its separation from the daily minutia of life. But I liked the idea of a world full of people—despite their many flaws—so much more.
By the time I left the nunnery, I had learned two things:
One, that I was never going to be a nun.
And two, that I didn’t have to be.
In my interviews with the nuns, and in having spent a lot of time with monks outside of the nunnery in the months before then, I had realized that I owned less “stuff” than most of the monks and nuns I met on my travels. At the time in 2007, when I had arrived in Mcleod Ganj, I was a vagabond—I had no home to call my own, I carried all my belongings–with the exception of my books– with me wherever I went, and I had no desire to return to civilization. If you took the religion out of it, I was pretty monastic in terms of lifestyle.
I learned that summer that you don’t have to become something to act a certain way. You don’t have to renounce the world in order to give up your possessions, to practice non-violence, or to live an unencumbered life. As someone who had zero interest in monastic life, especially the religious aspects of it, it was comforting to me that I could pick and choose the parts of what I liked about the nunnery and take them with me wherever I went. I didn’t have to take on the identity of a nun to practice the tenants of Buddhist life that I was so inspired by.
This lesson is especially relevant to me today as I finally come to the end of a three-year journey in which I have questioned what I want to do with my career, my life, and my writing. I have always been a journalist. I have identified as one, worked as one, grown as one. But increasingly the label has ceased to fit.
I love doing the work of journalism and because of that, I suspect I will always be a journalist. But I no longer want it to be my main source of income. For three years, this has created a battle within myself. When I try to make an income as a journalist, I end up doing work I hate, on topics that I don’t care about, at rates I am no longer willing to accept, and the stress of it all but ruins my mental health and the time I spend with my family. But if I let go of this dependence on my journalism income, then I must replace it with something else.
Am I ready to be defined by this something else?
Turns out, I am. It took me three years to come to this acceptance, but I find it difficult to express just how freeing it has been to finally let go of the idea that freelance journalism should pay my bills. Instead, I’m focusing on building a business, learning new things, and taking on new roles for my income, as I dedicate myself to journalism in the way that I had always intended—to tell the stories that I believe matter, that aren’t being heard, and that a cash-strapped journalist with bills to pay doesn’t have the freedom to tell.
Turns out, when I took money out of the equation, I found the freedom to tell stories again.
Today, I find myself practicing journalism, but I no longer wear the orange robes of the profession. In fact, I’m currently working on a story that is meaningful to me, that I hope will create positive change in the world, but that pays next to nothing. I’ve tried selling it for several years, but have always had to back away from poorly-paid assignments because I couldn’t justify the hours spent away from my child on something that wouldn’t even pay the cost of the coffee drank while writing it.
Now, with other varied sources of income, I can. That next-to-nothing check will probably arrive three months later than promised, but it won’t matter to me. Because money isn’t the motivation for telling this story; the person whose story I’m telling is.
So, I’m transitioning. I’m finally finishing the rewrites on that novel that’s been trying to get my attention for years. I’m beginning to report on stories that I care about without worrying about how much they’ll pay. I’m writing essays again. And I’m building a business, learning new things, and seeking out new opportunities for growth.
I’ve internally changed the definition of who I am.
And strangely, all that has done is allowed me to do more of what I love.
Is your definition of who you ought to be holding you back, too?
Think about that today and see if, like me, you might find that letting go of certain ideas about how to be a writer or journalist might help you to actually be more of it.