Acts of Faith

Learning to be present at SXSW | A virtual discussion with Women-led businesses for Female Founders and Women in STEM | The Ultimate Guide on Career Pivots

This essay was reprinted from Optionality, a membership community and platform for experienced professionals who are ready to embrace new ways of working. Via live and virtual events, masterclasses, local meetups, and retreats, Optionality members are equipped, educated, and empowered to make bold new moves and embrace their next act.

I’m writing this on the flight back from Austin, TX, from this year’s SXSW conference, my fifteenth time attending.

[SIDE NOTE: I missed the conference last year and documented the FOMO I initially felt after having made the decision not to go. Spoiler alert: I got over it.]

At some point a few years back I changed my default travel plan setting from “probably going to SX” to probably not. The shift started a few years back, when I attended a SXSW industry party and encountered an old friend and former colleague.

We caught up. He finished his beer, looked at his watch, noticed it was almost 9pm and said, “I’m getting too old for this shit. I’m going to bed.”

And I, doing the math on how long we’ve known each other and realizing I wasn’t much younger, considered perhaps I was getting too old for this shit, if that shit was party hopping, rolling into bed around 2am, getting up in time to speak on a morning panel and then doing it all again, four days in a row.

I endeavored in future to have a compelling business reason to attend SX. As it turns out, I did have a client launch to support this year, but I had committed to going to the conference prior to this outcome, assuming that by committing to attend, my compelling business purpose would materialize.

It’s a new behavior for me, showing up with no ulterior motive beyond just seeing what happens.

I evaluated previous SX’s by volume: number of opportunities generated, hands shaken, business cards (more accurately now, LinkedIn profiles) exchanged. And while I often ended up enjoying myself, enjoyment had been an unintended outcome squeezed in-between business meetings, panels, client activations, obligations. Eating well, sleeping and hydrating were nice, but unlikely.

This year, when faced with a tossup situation of attending an interesting event across town with a potential for meeting new clients and meeting with a bunch of former colleagues at a bar in the hotel lobby, I chose the lobby. I reasoned: New prospects come and go, they may or may not materialize; I already got my steps in today; and I may not have many more opportunities to connect with this community before I, too, became too old for this shit.

Prior to coming this year I had announced my not-so-new advisory, Candor Partners, which in itself was transformational because I announced it, putting a stake in the ground versus my usual technique of casually mentioning what I was doing if asked. Announcing was something I usually did for my employers, clients, or co-founders. I could sing opera into a megaphone for them; for myself I preferred whispering. My solo endeavors were secrets.

Even flying to SX felt different this year. In years prior, I kept my head down in a laptop, working madly, for fear that if I looked out the window I might realize how much time I was spending away from my family, from myself. Staying busy kept me from crash landing into the realization that what I was doing was hard; fear kept me busy, kept me levitated.

This time, looking out the window I was aware that I was in midair, mid journey. I was not scribbling to-do's into my notebook, or listing prospects and possibilities as though they were stairs I could descend back down to safe land, just in case.

Being present is my new levitation device, honed over years of attempting to achieve certainty and failing. Predictability has its own stuffiness. And after years of waking up with tension headaches I was now realizing I had been willingly breathing the toxic fumes of others’ expectations, and, far worse, of my own outdated expectations.

There is no certainty amid weightlessness; and yet, I prefer it that way.

I had an out-of-body moment the last evening of my stay. I was looking down at myself at the cocktail party of a friend’s employer’s company, wearing the loaned name badge of someone who had been invited to the event but wasn’t in town yet. I was standing at a high-top table, sipping sauvignon blanc out of a plastic beer tumbler, next to people I didn’t know and who didn’t know me, wondering if I should reveal my false identity by introducing myself. I opted to wait a few minutes and take it all in. Not talking to anyone. Not offering up my personal tagline. Not looking around the room for people I already knew.

In my socially invisible state I could see threads between strangers — the bosses in front of whom they had to appear to be engaged, the clients in which they feigned interest, the colleagues they truly wanted to be talking to, and the ones they didn’t.

I turned to my table-mates and asked them questions: Where are you based? What are you working on? How do you like it?

I made a point of enabling encounters, absorbing their stories with no attempt to segue into my own, with a certainty that hellos happen for a reason.

My plan this year of just showing up was not conjured up by my inner marketer, nor by feelings of entitlement derived over so many years of hustling, nor with a big corporate brand on my badge, nor with a mandate to work the room and get 'er done. Just with curiosity.

It was a moment of surrender to discovery. It was always available to me; I was the final holdout.

I had always deserved this. We all do.

Jory Des Jardins is a fractional executive, startup advisor, and startup founder who has worked with B2B, B2C, and B2B2C companies on go-to-market, scale, and exit strategy. She co-founded BlogHer, a startup that achieved category-leading scale and was acquired by SheMedia, and is co-founder of Optionality, a community of practice for independent workers, giving structure to alternatives to the single-path career existence. And she founded Candor Partners, a go-to-market, growth, and exit advisory for startups, scale-ups, new ventures and impact organizations.