Jun 8, 2021
A Fundamental Shift
I want to think we’ve learned something here—slowing down, doing less, spending more time with the people who truly matter to us, resisting a world in which Amazon is the only store, creating actual policies to at least begin to address systemic racism, eliminating student loan debt, shrinking the wage gap…
Did we, though? Are we just going back to making plans every weekend and being too busy and/or broke to create change? Have we done anything meaningful to save our planet, or did we just build a new garbage island full of discarded face masks?
It’s depressing to contemplate all the ways we’ve let ourselves down, and it’s hard to be patient when change takes so. fucking. long.
But.
Someone recently told me they’ve been reading more anti-racist and feminist texts because of me.
I’ve been enjoying being out and talking to strangers in a way I never did before the pandemic. I’m not sure why—very fascinated by everyone’s varying responses to this time in our lives—but I’m feeling less socially awkward than I did before. Go figure.
Activism feels more accessible to me now, like I have more of a focus (voting rights. It’s voting rights.)
I’m trying to figure out something to do with my old face masks, even though I am not a crafty person (lavender sachets for everyone?).
Something fundamental has shifted in my relationship to my work, too. I’m no longer prioritizing other people’s companies over my own—I’ve been writing and creating like crazy this year, and I just feel so much better about all the client work I’m doing, because it’s not *ALL* I’m doing. Which is as good for my clients as it is for me.
I’m filling my days with as much joy as I possibly can, because that is as much a part of the resistance as anything else—and if 2020 taught me anything, it’s that life is too damn short and precarious to spend any more time NOT doing the things I want to do.
I don’t know what’s going to happen next. But we can’t go back to sleep.
This is what I know today.
About Sam
Samantha Pollack is a Copywriter & Creative Director who works with ethically minded, mission driven businesses who are actively trying to reshape our culture (and possibly tear down the patriarchy). She’s also the founder of The Highly Sensitive Business Owner, a 12-week online program that helps HSPs & neurodivergent business owners create healthier, more sustainable systems in their work.
Sam also writes about feminism, privilege, pop culture, entrepreneurship, the creative process, and whatever else is on her mind. She currently lives in Asheville, NC.
Emails for cult thought leaders.
(Personality included.)
Want to learn how to craft emails that inspire action and engagement WITHOUT the “tried and true” (cough: patriarchal) norms we’ve all been taught?
I’m doing it, and I can show you how to do it, too.
(But sometimes, I also like to write about the books I’m reading, or the creative process, or the entrepreneurial experience, or why I hate Steve Jobs, or how I met my BFF. I’ll send you emails like that, too.)
*Just kidding. It’s only an email list.
Books. Cats. Rants. Drawrings.
(and every couple months or so, an unexplained absence 🤷🏻)
