I was never meant to "keep up"
Or, a beginning in many directions/mid-life reflections of a creative wanderer
My easel has arrived, but it’s too cold to be out in the garage assembling it, so I’ve been doing some “inner studio” work this weekend…
Dearest wild, messy, curious creative,
I’ve spent most of my life trying to keep up. With systems. With expectations. With the versions of myself other people seem to look for in me before I even open my mouth.
The trouble is, I’ve always been a little foggy around the edges. Not in essence, because I’d be the first to tell anyone who’d listen who I am and who I am not, but in rhythm. I move differently. I pause a lot. (And I can take a snooze just about anywhere.) I retreat, I question, I study.
I think best in spirals. I work best when I forget I’m supposed to be working. And I create best when I’ve forgotten anyone might be watching.
For a long time, I chalked this up to personal failure.
Couldn’t maintain a strict schedule? Lazy, or stubborn.
Preferred solitude over social ease? Selfish, or too introverted. (I am quite introverted, but if you’ve ever had an in-depth conversation with me where my eyes don’t glaze over and there’s not a smile from introductions still plastered on my face while I’ve wandered into some imaginary realm, then you know I’m anything but shy.)
Drifted between passions instead of climbing a single ladder? Unfocused, fickle.
I tried to fix myself. Or rather, I tried to improve the version of myself I’d been told was almost good enough. I got very good at acting like someone who was steady, efficient, energetic, and professional. But underneath that performance, something was unraveling.
It didn’t matter how much I learned to mimic the structures around me. The core truth stayed: I wasn’t built like the world assumed I was, or like the world told me I need to be. Forty-two years into this life, and now I’m realizing I never will be.
Lately, I’ve started letting that truth speak.
One of the more recent mirrors in this process was Human Design.
Now, I didn’t fall headfirst into the system. I circled it. I rolled my eyes at it, because it never really rang true for me anytime I got my chart. Oh, there were elements which did, and parts of me longed for it to, because what I saw was often the me that the world seemed to want me to be.
I’d click away from the tab, but then come back. Something in it was humming, quietly, underneath the noise.
“This isn’t the part where I say I’ve figured it all out.
This is the part where I say: I’m finally starting.”
When I first plugged in my birth info, the chart labeled me as a Generator, someone built to respond, powered by sacral energy, steady and reliable in action. Basically, someone who could thrive in many of the systems I’d been trying to survive in for decades. And because I had no reason to question it, I assumed it must be right. (Especially because so many calculators returned the same response.)
But something in me kept resisting the label. And when I finally took a deeper look, one that went beyond auto-calculators and surface-level results, I found something different.
I’m not a Generator.
I’m a Projector.
Not an engine. A mirror. A guide. A distiller of energy, not its endless source.
I’m still learning what that means. Not just in a system, but in practice. What it feels like to stop trying to run on fuel I don’t have. What it means to work when there’s clarity, not pressure. What it means to wait, not passively, but attentively, for resonance. For recognition. For real invitation (external or internal).
And maybe more importantly, what it means to invite myself back into the rhythm I’ve always needed.
(Incidentally, I’ve learned that for someone like me born with a lot of cusp energy, online Human Design Calculators can sometimes provide results that don’t ring true, because really it could be one side of the coin or the other, and it’s so close but it takes human discernment to really tell the difference… since calculators can’t provide human discernment, it returns a response, and that response has never felt right to me.)
Time to dive back into the rhythm I always needed, the rhythm I knew I always needed, but because it wasn’t the sort of rhythm the systems of our Western culture prizes, it’s a rhythm I never claimed until recently:
That rhythm is quiet. It’s lunar, not linear. It’s deeply internal before anything becomes visible. It doesn’t announce itself with trumpets. It gathers over time, like moss.
And now that I’ve let myself pause long enough to see it, so many things have started to make sense.
Like why I’ve always rebelled against external timelines—even the gentle ones. Why I need time to study before I speak. Why I don’t trust things that move too fast. Why I prefer a single meaningful connection to a dozen social obligations. Why I burn out even in roles that look soft from the outside.
I’m beginning to understand that none of this is failure. It’s form. It’s pattern. It’s design. Not as fate, but as invitation.
I have a 5/1 Profile. In Human Design terms, this means two things that resonate so deeply for me:
First: I’m the Heretic. People project things onto me. They see leadership, vision, solutions. Sometimes they’re right. Sometimes they’re not. And when I fail to live up to the version they imagined, the fall is quick and sharp.
Not only that, but I’d rather be like Lilith, like Elphaba, self-exiling to keep my integrity intact than bowing down to a system I don’t agree with.
Second: I’m the Investigator. I don’t like to improvise my way through life. It makes me nervous. I study. I research. I gather. I need to know things in my bones before I can offer them outward.
Going to a museum? I plan what exhibits I need to see and examine the museum map… and I might just skip the exhibit everyone says I simply must see.
Going on a self-paced two-week trip abroad? I plan everything down to what train I will take and when, and at what time I should leave to make that train, before I even get on a plane to cross an ocean… and I might just skip the fancy restaurant everyone says I simply must visit so I can use those funds to go stand with some old rocks for a while.
This isn’t to say I don’t sometimes enjoy spontaneity. Sometimes I do… but I don’t like to do what everyone says I should, and I do like to plan things out.
It’s a strange combination. Being seen as someone with answers or as someone who responds to unsolicited answers in unexpected ways. But it also explains why I’ve never felt at ease in environments that reward duty over curiosity.
And why I’ve always found refuge in creative works, where meaning unfolds on its own time.
This post isn’t about Human Design, really. It’s about what happens when you start giving yourself permission to move at your own rhythm, before someone else validates it or you.
It’s about letting go of the fantasy that you’re going to wake up one day and march to the beat of another’s drum, not because it’s a good beat, but because they’re beating it, have been beating it longer, and think you should fall into step. (When I was in high school, I quit band/marching band so I could take art class… what a perfect and quite literal example!)
It’s about acknowledging that maybe, just maybe, the reason you’ve always struggled to keep up is because you weren’t meant to.
You were meant to see differently.
To move to your own rhythm.
To speak when there’s something worth saying.
To create not for performance, but for presence.
(And I won’t lie: the hardest thing about this is that sometimes I still have to march to someone else’s drum just to pay the bills, for now, even though it feels positively soul-squashing. Like put my soul in a vice and just keep tightening it until I find myself struggling to sleep the night through, eating more Reese’s than I should, or wanting to “Office Space” some technological equipment.)
I’m not at the end of this journey. I’m just at the threshold.
Tarot’s Fool, foot poised over the cliff, with a little dog of course. Because I love dogs. (Shout out to my Beatrice!)
The Seer, brushing dust from the lens.
The Artist, with a half-filled page and paint still wet.
This isn’t the part where I say I’ve figured it all out. (Spoiler alert: I haven’t.)
This is the part where I say: I’m finally starting to live in a way that feels aligned with the life I’ve always secretly known I was meant for.
One built on depth, not deadlines. Meaning, not metrics. Clarity, not urgency. Sovereignty, not speed.
One where my work moves in rhythms too slow for the scroll, but just right for the soul.
Thank you for reading. Thank you for seeing.
If you’re standing at your own threshold, if you’ve been misnamed by systems, mistaken by others, misread by maps, you’re not alone.
You don’t have to keep up. You get to begin. (Even if beginning means staying where you are at least a little, at least for now… to quote the Bard via Hamlet, “The readiness is all.”)
With curiosity always,
Margaret
Letters from the studio, insights from the stars