An Ode to The Triple P Club
I’ve spent my entire life feeling pulled by an invisible cord wrapped snuggly around my heart.
There are countless moments when it’s plucked inexplicably, like someone reached down my throat and vibrated it. Shhh, listen. This.
I used to interpret its reverberations as omens of smooth sailing.
I muddled over what this tug could possibly mean at all hours—accidentally superimposing my ego’s dreams and my preexisting ways of believing on top of this subtle knowings true meaning.
One of the most profound moments was the fall day I stepped onto Colgate University’s campus. It was like the ground underneath my feet buzzed and something plucked at my consciousness. This. This is the school you’re meant to go to.
Of course, when my aunts and uncles and parent’s friends and high school teachers asked why I suddenly decided this school in the middle of GD nowhere was where I was meant to be, I mined for reasons that would make them think, “Yes! She’s gotta good head on her shoulders. She is making incredible future oriented decisions. She’s off to do big things.”
The truth was, it just felt like I was supposed. Inexplicably so.
So I played Jenga with every sentence that came out of my mouth so that everyone would think, Perfect. Yes. Wonderful. Good. Correct.
A certain portion of the human population spends most of their time searching for validation in other’s perspective, making meaning within their lives to fit the mold someone else has crafted, and painstakingly squeezing into carefully crafted definitions of success.
(Calling all my people-pleasers and perfectionists.)
If only these wonderful humans knew that the whole point of this jig we’re all dancing on Earth is to make a mess of all of it and revel in the experience of being alive. The meaning comes naturally, there’s no need to go digging for it.
If you haven’t guessed yet, I am by no means an exception.
Once the poster child for perfectionist people-pleasing gymnastics, I excelled at contorting myself into a Good Girl at the drop of a dime.
Call me Barbie, put me in a display box. I wanted other people to know that I, Ashley B Jones, was the picture perfect representation of goodness.
And… it… well… unfortunately, Colgate didn’t play out the way I dreamed and so desperately wanted.
Long story short, it wasn’t the Ashley Goes to College tv season I wanted. The one where she gets the swoon-worthy boyfriend, the excellent grades, the resounding praise, and is the queen of the social scene.
My transcription from screen to reality missed the mark, to my heart’s chagrin. Some of it was a great success but the other parts? Uh… not so much.
I spent the better part of those four years fumbling and anguishing that I was effing it all up and had somehow misread the guidance that had pulsed from my inner thread.
It didn’t look the way I wanted it to on the surface, and my mind couldn’t quite grasp that the pulsing cord deep within might be trying to echo a different truth.
So, as I scraped up to the finish line, I decided that this next season would be the moment when It Gets Better actually became my reality.
Unknown Artist.
But exactly was the “right” choice to make that dream my reality?
Let me tell you, everyone had an opinion. I loved it.
My science and logical brain raved over the information each person so readily gave. There was just simply so much data.
I made lists and graphs and spread sheets outlining what the potentially be the “right” choice for me could be.
Then, my aunt suggested NYC. “Everyone should live in The City in their twenties. It’s character building.”
Great suggestion. Yes. I’m going to do that. What a better place to discover myself. I have no idea what I want to do with my life. Might as well go to the concrete jungle, as Alicia Keys so eloquently crooned in 2009, “If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere.” That’s where I’ll find my dreams (and hopefully myself).
And so I found a job on LinkedIn that was so perfectly crafted to be my launch pad to success. “Market Research for Consulting Firms. Learn about different industries and support great minds solving even wider problems.”
I applied, I got an offer, and I took the job. It felt… right.
New Season: Ashley Takes New York City
It was week three that I realized that I had been hoodwinked, bamboozled, and led astray. This job was simply not what I had been sold in all the interviews. It was glorified sales and recruiting. Plain and simple.
And me? A holder of a Neuroscience degree?
There’s got to be more to my first job than this key-clacking jester’s job that a monkey could do.
I am more talented and capable than scraping leads from a database and copy and pasting mass “Hey hun!” messages on LinkedIn.
As I sat there at my standard issue corporate desk in the heat of August 2019, all I could feel was this drowning sense that I had been lied to and made the wrong choice. Messed up somewhere translating my subtle tug’s message. Again.
What was I doing even doing here?
It played on repeat in my mind, over and over and over.
New York City was wicked expensive in 2019 for a new grad. I couldn’t afford to do all the bright, shiny, artistic and personal development activities that all the adults in my life told me I needed to do for Future Me.
And if I wanted to set her up for success, I really needed to do all of them.
I could barely make rent and also have a social life to make new friends. If you’ve ever been to The Big Apple, you know that you can’t walk outside without $439 being charged to your credit card. ‘Tis the law!
So I began to search for meaning and understanding, silently choking on the fear that I might be the problem.
I inhaled any and every meaning making system I could find.
Tarot. Reiki. Astrology. Nude Portraiture. Yoga. Breathwork. Aliens. The Enneagram. Astral Projection. Herbalism. Existentialism.
You name it, I probably tried it.
And yet, I still felt like I was slowing decomposing inside.
MAKE IT MAKE SENSE.
Artist unknown.
SOMEONE. TELL ME WHAT TO DO.
I didn’t know. And the more that I asked around, the more clear it became this time that no one else did either.
Nothing they offered struck that invisible cord nestled into the very center of my being.
Nothing felt “right” and believe me, I was really trying to make it feel right.
My pro and cons lists became essays. Quick catch up with friends became lengthy data collecting vent sessions. I made bar graphs and mood boards, but nothing I found felt like it pointed me in the perfect direction that would maintain this Corporate Baddie Pipe Dream.
After nine months at my job, I developed what I coined as an energetic allergy. Specifically to the corporate office, the lights, the sounds, the floor plan, the incessant chatter.
More often than not when I walked in, my body freaked out and I had a panic attack. I had one for two hours straight one time. Y’all, that was really not fun.
So, not able to stay a moment longer, I quit.
And then, I freaked out. What on earth was I doing???
I panic applied to every job that felt somewhat resonant on LinkedIn I could find. I was unemployed. I looped around and around about being the picture of post-grad failure.
After a couple of weeks, the spiritual coach I was working with at the time forwarded me a job listing on Instagram, and it just felt like divine intervention.
Proof all my witchy meaning making work was actually manifesting.
I was on interview round three for what I had convinced myself (and my pendulum) was my dream job. An executive assistant at an up-and-coming health and wellness start up in SoHo. Perfect for me. So chic.
I was so convinced that I had it in the bag, I calculated out my start date and booked a trip home to visit my family the week before it.
You can imagine the cold curdling feeling that sludged through my body when I opened what I thought was my offer email and instead read, “We enjoyed getting to know you but have decided to go in a different direction.”
It was as if all sense of meaning sucked out of my reality. It had felt… right? Hadn’t I felt that tug in my being? And I still didn’t get it?
Reader, I simply did not comprehend what was happening.
My mom encouraged me to delay my trip to stay in NYC to keep job hunting. Uncharacteristic of my people-pleasing habits, I objected.
“No,” I insisted, “I need to come. I need to.”
There was a strong and urgent tug at the center of my being. One that I hadn’t felt in a hot minute.
I thought I needed a hard reset to reevaluate and replenish, like a colonic for my soul.
So, I went home for the week. There was some chatter about a virus? I was just enjoying the California sunshine and my mind was on DND. Then, on a Friday in the middle of March, the chatter exploded into an all out screech.
Like millions of others, I cancelled my flights back to NYC. COVID had arrived and the Unprecedented Times had officially begun.
Sense? Meaning? Ha. No one had any.
And yet, in the midst of flat out chaos, I had found that cord around my heart once more.
Four and half years later, my heart throbs for this younger version of me.
So focused on being who she thought she needed to be, she lost the intuitive intention of her original journey.
Over and over again, she cast a shadowed spell over her life rather than seeing the truth for what it was.
She was never failing in her ‘missteps’.
No, all that she set out to do, she succeeded at. She just couldn’t see it. She was too focussed on who she thought she had to be, impressing and squashing herself into a someone else’s definition of perfect.
She truly believed that she was at fault for all of the misfortunes she had experienced. She was convinced the random and unpredictable events of her life were evidence of her own failures—proof that she really would never be enough.
It aches when I think about it.
Because when I look back at her story, I see a different narrative.
She set out to NYC to find herself, deepen her spirituality, and explore different career paths. She did that.
She wrapped herself in life and threw her arms open wide to possibility. Scared, yes, and also she was doing it.
The more lost she felt, the more she found herself. And my god, she’s the reason I am where I am today.
Ladislav Záborský.
I just wish I could tell her…
The answers you’re looking for in others don’t exist. Their opinions are only data for your intuition to dance within.
You know this.
Sometimes you have to go through the process of collecting and sifting through data for a hot second to find that intuitive yes.
Not having it figured out right away all the time doesn’t mean you’re a failure—it just means that life doesn’t always (if ever) happen on the timeline you want it to.
Remember that the advice other people offer you is inherently bound to their own perspective. It doesn’t mean it doesn’t hold value, it just means that it’s tinted through their lens.
I know you know that everything is subjective.
You’re not always going to get it "right". You’re not supposed to.
There will always be Unprecedented Times, you’re going to hear this phrase a lot in the future. It’s not a new thing, just a zingy buzz word.
The search for meaning is a well-crafted tactic to avoid suffering.
And Unprecedented Times, by their nature, break the ways we operate. They render the rules of the past often obsolete.
How could your aunt, who was in her twenties in the late 90s, have any idea how the New York streets echoed in the 2019? Think about all of the Unprecedented Times (i.e. 9/11 and the 2008 stock market crash) that hadn’t happened yet.
That doesn’t make her wrong just slightly out of context.
Young Ashley, most advice you’re going to be given is actually just wishful revisionist histories—what each person retrospectively believed they should have done differently. And those edits are colored by each person’s own experiences, fear, dreams, and personality.
When all the world once knew is scattered, shattered on the zeitgeist floor, the only thread left is the cord of intuition at the center of the Self.
Your intuition is the most valuable tool you have. I know you know this.
Its intended use is not to prevent heartbreak and deep, soul-questioning disappointment.
No, it’s your intuition’s job is to:
Collect, sort, sift, and categorize life’s data points
Be the hotline on speed dial that your soul can ring up anytime to be reminded of its true nature and purpose
Discern between messages from the external world and your own internal landscape and decide which notes to take and which to toss
Offer guidance on how to navigate being the clearest version of yourself
It wasn’t your intuition’s job to prevent the suffering you felt in that horrible, no good first big girl job.
Your intuition wasn’t responsible for telling you that you were essentially being lied to. No, that job is going to give me what you intuitively know you need.
Deep and profound clarity.
You’re going to hate it so much that it will catapult you in the exact opposite direction.
Straight into the arms of your dream business.
As a result of taking that soul-sucking job, you enter the wild journey of entrepreneurship, move to Denver, and discover the most unfathomable, magical, and accepting community.
Your intuition isn’t meant to function or operate independently of logic.
You need to give it data to process so that it can give you feedback. The more life you live, the more aligned risks you take, the stronger your intuition is going to get.
Uncertainty is, unfortunately, part of the equation. If you’re feeling lost it doesn’t mean you’re failing, it means you’re doing a good job of being human.
This moment is an opportunity to recenter your why and remember your meaning for being. For a moment, try not to find a reason for the chaos. You love thunderstorms. So through your arms up as fear and uncertainty rain down and lighting strikes your life.
Falling apart and gluing it back together again is part of the recipe. The pivot point is realizing you don’t have to be or become anything to be worthy and be do good at existing.
It’ll make sense some day soon, maybe.
In this moment, just exist knowing that some strange future version of you is beyond grateful for the confusion existential mess that has you to question everything.
I adore you. Reach into your heart and grab on that invisible cord wrapped around your heart.
It’s me tugging on it from the other side.
