Better To Sit In The Valley, Than Climb The Wrong Mountain

I’ve always had an interesting relationship with productivity.

When I was young, I was deeply afraid of being unproductive. My ambitions and dreams often exceeded the resources and time that I had access to, so I found myself obsessing over making the most of my time, developing my skills, and building my resources.

Maybe the product of being a “gifted kid”, or maybe rooted in some other unmet need, but I placed much of my value in how I was seen by others in relation to my accomplishments, and skill sets.

I remember spending a Saturday afternoon, maybe 10 years old, watching television at my grandparent's home, and after walking out into the yard, seeing the night sky, realizing my day was spent and my weekend was over, I remember beginning to cry. I hated the idea that my downtime was being spent away in front of a television with no reward beyond entertainment.

Another one of these moments was being 9 years old, feeling that I was too old to begin dancing, knowing that there were girls my age competing at much higher levels than I could obtain and that it would take me significantly longer to obtain that skill level. I felt as though if I could not be the best, be some prodigy, I may as well never begin at all.

I was nine years old.

What I would give now to have the skill set of a dancer who began at nine.

Throughout my pre-teenage years, I found myself drawn to theatre because that was what I was good at. I had done it from a young age, I felt passion for the craft, but I also got a lot of validation for it.

I also fell in love with academics. I obsessed over my grades, attendance, homework, and any other form of academic validation I could get my hands on.

Honors Society Member.

Hope Squad Vice President.

Drama Council.

AP Classes.

Concurrent Enrollment.

I even took a Sophomore year math class over the summer simply so I could be ahead of my peers.

By the age of fourteen I was signed to my first acting agency by no one's wish but my own.

I planned to graduate with my associate's, get my bachelor's in two years, and begin pursuing my career at 20.

I had it all mapped out.

And it was going smoothly.

Until it wasn’t.

Mid sophomore year I found myself skipping class.

Experiencing the worst anxiety of my life, which I now understand to be the effects of C-PTSD.

I began to flounder. Holding onto the one lifeboat I had, which was theatre.

I told myself that if I couldn’t have it all, I at least needed that. It was the thing that fed me. It kept my head above water.

Throughout my Junior and Senior year, my academics continued to slip, through the global pandemic and shift to online work, I attended less and less school, as my body and brain began completely shutting down.

In my senior year, I was finally diagnosed with my autoimmune disease which had been destroying my body for who knows how long, after six months of blood work and hospital visits.

And by the end of my senior year, I was barely graduating.

I had applied to a handful of local colleges, with no intention of attending, and only because of a needs-based full tuition scholarship did I even consider going to the University of Utah, where I ended up later that fall.

By the final week of my senior year, I was starting and finishing three online credits just to be able to graduate.

I remember distinctly my drama teacher approaching me one day after rehearsal saying to me “You need to do your school work. The most recruited drama student in the state can’t just not graduate.”

And I did.

By the skin of my teeth and the privileges that only come with being deemed a “good student”, I was able to convince my teachers and councillors to help me graduate.

That summer I didn’t do much. I prepared for school, I worked when I could, I embraced my final moments of youth, and I headed up to University in the fall. I thought that I had it all figured out.

My class schedule was shorter, and my workload lighter. I began my semester with a tone of ease. Thinking I would simply glide through the coursework.

But you can’t teach a dog new tricks.

And halfway through the semester, the waters got bumpy and I again began to fall into the same habits as before.

Missing class.

Missing coursework.

And I sat for some time, thinking that I simply needed to work harder. That I needed to force this structure onto me.

That I needed to do the college thing because that's what people my age do.

But after the full semester and a failed attempt at online coursework, I decided that I needed to listen to myself, and leave school.

I hated the idea.

I knew that fourteen-year-old Cam who was obsessed with Gilmore Girls, who believed she’d be at an Ivy League studying biochemistry at 19 was absolutely weeping right now.

But I had to do it for myself. I had to do it for her.

She had all these unmet needs, all these difficulties that at that moment were not being met, and I needed to do something to fix them.

I knew that college was not my hill to climb at that moment, and that life had lessons for me to learn elsewhere.

I remember sitting with my therapist, and talking to her about what I should do regarding school, and she had me imagine that the decision was already made. I had chosen to leave school, I was moved out, and I was working a job and doing the projects I wanted to do.

I felt a wave of relief wash over me. I may have even shed a tear.

She then had me imagine my dream life for the next six months or so.

I said it was living on my own, somewhere in Provo, with people I love, working a job, with a car, and pursuing my career as an actor.

So I left.

And after six excruciating months, I woke up recently, and walked down into the kitchen, of the home I live in, where I made myself a meal from the groceries I bought and got into the car that I purchased to drive to rehearsal to the show that I’m in.

But that wasn’t without work. It also wasn’t without a lot of waiting for things to simply work themselves out.

My January to May consisted of working full time, at a job that was not ideal, starting trauma work, taking time to do nothing, spending time with friends, and living as someone that many versions of me, and much of society would deem as a failure.

But it got me to where I wanted to be.

And it has brought me joy.

And it has brought me peace.

And as I learn more and more about myself, I care less and less about how my life is seen, and more and more about how it is experienced.

Productivity for me now is about balance.

It’s about working to bring about experiences that I want to have.

It’s about self-care.

It’s about taking time to figure out what the hell I actually want rather than what I think is expected of me, or what I expect of myself.

It’s about turning the car around after realizing I’m driving the wrong way, and parking to understand where to go next rather than driving to Vegas because that's where everyone else seems to be heading.

It’s about viewing life as a journey to be had, rather than a race to be won.

It’s about embracing sitting in the valleys of my life, rather than climbing the wrong mountain.

These last six months have been some of the darkest of my life. Some of the hardest. They’ve held some of the most pain, the most anxiety, the most confusion.

But as I come out of this dark time, I also see what it has taught me. It has helped me embrace stillness, embrace silence, embrace not being “productive” by the standards of others, but being productive towards living the life that I want to live.

I feel like I am finally climbing the right mountain.

And by that, I mean doing the things that I want to do.

Not living by what I think others ask of me.

And it’s hard work.

It’s just as painful.

And I know that what it is that I want will evolve, but I know now that I won’t be living a life that is not my own.

This journey is mine and no one else’s.

And I know now, that when I figure it out when that hill is climbed, it will have been worth it.