By the end of 2020, exhaustion had begun to set in. The events of 2020 made Black and brown researchers hot commodities which meant that work for Touch of Whit Creative was streaming in, and I was still a party of one. The needs for IIC seemed endless and I was increasingly managing more people, projects and tasks at every touch point. Burn out was definitely near.

If someone had told me that I would be running two businesses, in the midst of a global pandemic a year earlier I likely would have laughed to the point of tears. I’ve stated in the past that I never wanted to be an entrepreneur, so the idea of becoming one while the world was in disarray seemed profoundly absurd. And yet, that’s exactly what happened.

This is a story told by the non-corporate version of me. No flowers or feel good tummy rubs. Just truth.

This is the story of about the rocky journey of Insights in Color.

At some point in the past two years I decided that I really wanted to open the door of mystery around who I am when I’m not making painstakingly detailed thought leadership posts for my business. And so I set out to build a site (yes this site), and brand, and a visual reflection of who I saw myself being and who I wanted others to know. I built a theme around the idea of “untethered” because, for those who know me, this is the quintessential idea of who I am. But since doing that, nothing really moved forward. Why is this the case?

The idea that I may get to the end of my road, heavy with potential that was never fulfilled is my daily nightmare. For me, waiting feels like a lifetime nemesis and it brings about the heaviest kind of anxiety within me. I’ve always cloaked it under the veil of impatience, but in reality, the possibility of not being able to do or accomplish something because I’ve run out of time has always felt like an unrelenting monster, heavy on my back, counting down invisible minutes and waiting for me to leave this life unfulfilled.

Unfortunately, I'm not always aware when burnout is happening. Due to the way I immerse myself into my projects I find that it's often too late once I've realized I'm exhausted or in need of a break. However, I think we all know that pouring from an empty cup yields the worst results. While I haven’t been able to completely shift my way of working, I have been able to design ways to shake up my routine and prevent myself from spiraling into the negative side of burnout.

What’s the secret? Anticipating burnout.

I know that sounds… like an obvious answer but let me explain.

At the end of last year, I made a plan.

Since I had no village where I was, I’d travel to see as many friends as possible to make community happen for me. Starting in March, I planned trips to try and see at least one friend a month.

Here’s how it’s gone so far.

Running, depending on how you frame it could be the difference in fulfilling life well-lived and a life never fully realized. Knowing when to leave, and when to fight to stay is hard. But when the lists are made and the pros and cons are weighed, if the only thing holding you back is fear of the unknown, perhaps taking a chance and trying would be better than not trying at all.

The choice is really, up to you.

Expressions of love, intimacy and affection are all highly loaded topics in the the Black community- especially in America. The tropes and characterizations of Blacks, our allure, sexual appeal, and exoticism places us on precarious ground when it comes to public displays of intimacy both within and outside of our homes.

Getting this right could fully change our relationship with work and how we think of the workplace. If we were to make work, work for us, it would start by making space for it in our lives in a way that feels more organic and authentic to who we are. Instead of making work the capitalist chore that it is, it can feel more like a part of our natural existence if we are able to do it in our most optimal states of productivity.

Somewhere in Whitney’s world of fantasy, I had subconsciously assumed that the most exciting parts of my life would begin when I met my life partner- someone who would ultimately like the things I’d like, or who would learn to grin and bear it- like me. Essentially, for God knows how long, I had been waiting for the friend I never had to show up and do life with me, willingly and enthusiastically, while also exposing me to new adventures.

The reason I never had an answer to that dreaded question of “what I liked to do” was because it all somehow got lost in the way I loved my friends.

Gen X has historically has gotten little to no credit for doing anything phenomenal in culture and society, but I would be remiss if I did not pay homage the way Black GenX women are clearly setting the standard for us to follow when it comes to what aging can look like. It is overwhelmingly clear that the Black women in this generation are seemingly doing magical things to redefine how time is impacting who they are and how they show up.

While we push on one end to have our diversity recognized by non-blacks, on the other end exists a more foreboding menace that resides within our own communities where we are often chastised, ridiculed and made fun of for even considering an existence outside of the core tenants of Blackness and Black culture.

It’s amazing to me sometimes how crushing some of life’s milestones can be for those of us still navigating our way forward through adulthood. Even more amazing when you realize that these milestones or, socially constructed points of achievement used to determine if your life is a failure or success, follow you from birth to death and are seemingly unescapable. This is true even for those of us who, like me, try to push against the high probability of getting sucked into the predictable, expected & pre-determined cadence of life.

As a Black woman, now entrepreneur, the ability for me to be fragile, helpless and dependent on someone else was never really truly a part of my story or my upbringing. Now, don’t get me wrong, I had parents and they definitely provided me with love and shelter and gave me the things I needed, but, just as they were never spoiled with tender care and affection, finding that muscle in the process of child rearing was not always possible.

I knew then that I could never be a part of anything that required me to adhere to any kind of dress code or uniform and, with the exception of the few retail and restaurant jobs I held while in high school and college, this has mostly been the case. What I was too young to know or even understand at that point was that when you’re a Black woman in America, the act of getting dressed and choosing to own your look is an act of defiance within itself.

Essentially, we dedicate entire chapters of our lives around finding our perfect romantic partner and modifying our behaviors and expectations to do so, just like our parents, and their parents did. What past generations did not account for however, was the prospect of marriage becoming less desirable, or even less necessary overtime. And while women are increasingly commanding boardrooms, and owning more of their own stories, for many of us, the part that was trained to be filled by a man by now, remains empty.