No One Knows What I Do, Because I Don't Know What I Do

No one knows what I do, because I don’t know what I do. A revelation that hit me in the gut as I was listening to podcasts, trying to stop myself from scrolling. I stumbled across Baby, This is Keke Palmer. I love her ability to be authentically herself, and over the years, she’s stood by that authenticity as it has become her brand. Keke’s recent conversation with Oprah went beyond inspiration. It felt like I was sitting at the table with them. When wisdom speaks, I listen.

One thing stood out more than anything else. Belief. An area that requires uncomfortable questions. Do I actually believe I’m going to do the thing I say I’m called to do, or do I believe it in theory?

Paul says, For I can do everything through Christ, who gives me strength. (Philippians 4:13). A verse I’ve heard and quoted for years. In context, despite what we walk through, God gives us the strength to see it through. It’s full dependence and trust in him—the same belief needed to show up consistently and not just endure hard seasons.

I recently shared that I have ideas, but the moment doubt creeps in, I never launch them. However, I do launch them; the outcome doesn’t meet my expectations. Books, journals, t-shirts, podcasts, showcases—the list can keep going—but spare me the embarrassment. I recently launched a six-week intensive that helps people take a written poem and prepare it for the microphone, born of walking a peer through her own writing-to-spoken-word process before an upcoming open mic. I loved helping her stand in the power of her voice without disclaimers, because we don’t need to make our experience more palatable for others through this expression.

After I launched it, I realized my audience knows me from a handful of different seasons, each tied to wherever I was at the time. I’ve continuously started and stopped to heal, take refuge, or gather the pieces needed before I could get to where God was taking me next. When in the middle of one of those stops, it never feels like a continuation. More like quitting again. It’s only when I look back that I can see it as a part of what God’s doing in me.

Clarity is often easier for others than for ourselves, because we have a close-up view of our own shortcomings. Doubt and fear start talking us out of the next step before we finish taking the last one. While sitting with this, I came across an article about being embarrassed for disappearing after you’ve established yourself as someone who helps others stay consistent, when you yourself are not.

It’s not about the intensive.

It’s not about the failed ideas.

It’s this: as a believer, why am I struggling to believe I can see anything through? What generational junk am I still working through that keeps me stuck, stagnant, and feeling defeated, when launching has never been my problem? It’s that with so many launches, and so many ventures that didn’t stick, I keep asking when will it finally land.

The world is constantly evolving. People are changing. That’s the one constant we can stand on these days. I’m changing too, daily, especially on this side of marriage and motherhood. I am not, and will never again be, who I was before. In that, I can give myself a lot more grace to evolve.

I have so much respect for people who have it figured out, who are courageous enough to go all in on something that was once merely an idea. But what about the rest of us, still figuring it out? Do we lack resolve? Is this part of the process? Or is there a deeper, rooted belief keeping us stuck in a cycle?

A cycle that isn’t only about launching ideas, but also showing up in my marriage.

My husband and I have good days, and then we repeat the same frustrations with each other. I’m learning that anger is something I thought I dealt with before marriage, but in every way, God is using him to put His hand on it and expose where it’s still living in me. I can sit here defeated, or I can sit alongside our marriage coaches and acknowledge that we are two devoted people willing to go the distance, willing to do the work to get where God needs us to be, together. And alongside them, we see the cycle clearly. At its core, we’re tired. Tired from parenting, tired from work.

I’m a stay-at-home mom who wants to work, doing some part-time things, trying to finally answer the call to entrepreneurship without hiding or shrinking back. He’s doing twelve-hour shifts in a space that’s hard but necessary for our family right now. I have to actually pick up the tools to get out of the cycle that keeps lagging our marriage, and it’s the same story in my daily life. I see it. And still, I stop, start, and get discouraged.

There’s a missing piece, and I believe developing this writing habit, showing up and using my voice through it, will help me unlock it. Writing and poetry are the one area I have never gone all in on, and maybe that’s the point. The continuation is where we discover what was always there. We just had to return to it after gathering the missing pieces. And it’s never failure until we stop.

That belief never left. It just got drowned out by self-doubt masquerading as the voice of our Creator. But if He is good, then those thoughts are not from Him. As Philippians says, I have to fix my mind on what is true, what is noble, what is right (Philippians 4:8). That’s how I overcome the fear that if I don’t move quickly enough, I won’t know what’s needed.

We can’t use waiting and praying as a crutch when God is simply waiting on us to keep showing up in the discomfort, in the figuring it out, in the in-between.

For example, I started writing this as my daughter sleeps, interrupted by her waking to eat lunch, only to stop again to change a poopy diaper. I could have closed my laptop after the fifth interruption. I didn’t. That’s the practice right now. The goal isn’t finished or perfection. It’s simply not closing my laptop.

Resolve is built through trying.

Consistency is formed when you continue to decide to show up imperfectly.

Even though I just launched the intensive, I’ve already taken it offline because I finally know enough to build the next version that helps the one like me stop treating every stall as proof they were never called to this, where authenticity is the secret sauce. Can you take the thing you’re scared to say out loud, get in front of an audience anyway, still shaking, unfinished in your brain, but willing to speak anyway?

You actually do know what you do. You need to stand in it and speak up.

If this is you too, stuck in the start-stop cycle, tell me in the comments what you keep starting and putting down. I want to know I'm not the only one.

Janae Carlee