Living As-If
it’s not pretending, it’s embodying
Finding steady income can be tough…
…the graphic design gigs have been fewer and farther between lately. And the long-term ones I apply for through the job posting sites? Yeah, I don’t even hear shit back those. Not a rejection. Not a “thanks but no thanks.” Just… silence. That particular rat race of online job searching has become a mess for everyone, and I’ve lost whatever appetite I once had for it.
So here I am. Fifty-three years old, leaning on my father for financial help in ways that I’m not proud of and won’t pretend feel great about. My first book is written, that is truth. It is good. I know it’s good. And it doesn’t have a publisher yet.
Still… I call myself an author.
Most days, that honestly feels like the bravest thing I’ve ever done. Some days it just feels flat-out stupid, not gonna lie.
But here’s what I keep coming back to, and it’s the thing this whole article is about. I think calling myself an author might be the most important work I’m doing right now. Not the writing. Not the submitting. The claiming of it.
That’s what Living As-If truly is. It’s not what most people think it is.
Let’s Get Something Straight
You’ve probably heard some version of this idea before. Gabrielle Bernsteintalks about it. Wayne Dyerbuilt a career on the spiritual framework underneath it. The concept is not new, and I’m not here to steal it from anyone or pretend I invented it. I didn’t.
What I do want to push back on is the naïve version of the idea that many people walk away with. The whole “fake it till you make it” idea, which is how this concept often gets watered down, is thin. Worse yet, it sets people up for a specific kind of shame when the faking doesn’t produce the making on a specific schedule.
You cannot live As-If you have a million dollars when you’re struggling to cover rent. You cannot live As-If you’re a professional athlete when you’re in your fifties and the body has other opinions. If you try to perform a life you have zero legitimate foothold in, you’re not practicing a spiritual principle. You’re just lying to yourself, and at some point the gap between the performance and the reality becomes its own source of pain.
So what is the honest version of this?
The Foothold Is the Whole Thing
Here’s what I’ve figured out, lived from the inside of a genuinely uncertain moment: Living As-If only works when you have a real foothold in the identity you’re stepping into. Even a small one. Even a partial one. But it must be a real one.
I have written a book. That is fact. That makes me an author. The publishing deal hasn’t arrived yet, but the work exists. The foothold is there. So when I say “I’m an author,” I’m not performing something false. I’m claiming something true that the world hasn’t officially stamped yet. There’s a difference. Know that.
I race on sailboats. Or at least I did for fifteen years or more. I’ve crewed on many boats of many types. I know the weight of a last-second tack, I know what it feels like when the hull lifts and the whole boat becomes something close to flight. I know what it feels like to hold a line that is ultimately controlling whether we wipe out or stay upright. When I walk down to the marina here in Charleston and look at those fifty, sixty, seventy-foot sailboats and feel something like ownership in my chest... that’s not delusion. That’s me standing fully in a part of my life that is already real and letting it expand in my imagination without apologizing for it.
I’m a graphic designer with twenty years of experience. The gigs are slow right now, and the inbox is quiet in ways that make me anxious. But I am still a graphic designer. The slow season doesn’t revoke the identity.
The same is true for photography. My fine art is not leaping out of my website and onto people’s walls as often as I’d like. As often as would pay the bills. Still, I’m a photographer. I teach the craft. I devote time to an art form that shaped who I am.
I’m a writer. I’m a sailboat racer. I’m a creative in many ways.
The As-If isn’t about pretending the circumstances are different, or that you’re someone else entirely. It’s about refusing to let the circumstances define who you are in the first place.
Setting Your Exposure Before the Light Is Perfect
In my book, where I use photography analogies to teach life transformation, I spend some time with the exposure triangle. This is the relationship between ISO, aperture, and shutter speed that determines how a camera receives light. It’s one of the analogies I use to talk about how we prepare ourselves to receive what’s available in any given moment… on any given Tuesday.
The thing about exposure settings is this: you configure them before the shot. You don’t wait for perfect light to decide how your camera is going to receive it. You set your instrument up based on what you know about yourself, the conditions, and what you’re trying to capture. And then you work with what comes.
Living As-If is the same move, applied to identity. You set who you are before the external confirmation arrives. You don’t wait for the publisher, the paycheck, the title, the relationship, the number on the scale, or the approval of anyone else to decide what you’re made of. You configure yourself first. The circumstances are just the light.
This isn’t magical thinking. It’s not a vision board wish list. It’s a decision about where you’re standing while you wait.
What It Actually Looks Like on a Tuesday
I want to be specific, because “embody your higher self” is the kind of language that sounds good, but does nothing if not applied with the proper mindset. Here’s what Living As-If actually looks like in my life right now, on an ordinary day. A Tuesday.
It looks like introducing myself as an author when someone asks what I do, and not immediately following it with a disclaimer about the publishing timeline.
It looks like walking through this city and feeling like I belong here. Not as a visitor. Not as someone scraping by. As someone who chose this place intentionally, who knows its streets, and who has earned his seat in it.
It looks like being completely, fully present in a conversation. When I’m talking with someone, I have nothing else. No half-attention on the financial anxiety, no mental draft of an email I need to send, no quiet hum of worry underneath the words. In that moment, the only thing that exists is the person in front of me I’m having coffee with. And here’s the thing... in that moment, I literally don’t have anything else. I am only there, with that person.
Maybe that’s the purest form of it. Maybe I just hit on something I didn’t realize until right fucking now…
Living As-If you have all the time in the world for the person in front of you. Living As-If this conversation is exactly where you’re supposed to be. Because it is.
But it’s even more. It looks like choosing joy, and I mean actively and deliberately, even when the inbox is empty and the bank account is uncomfortable. My baseline has shifted enough over the last few years that my current bad day sits higher than my old good day. That’s not a brag, it’s evidence of something that changed inside me. Joy stopped being a reward I collected after things went well. It became a practice I return to regardless. I simply had to remember who I am… same holds true for you perhaps.
The Part Nobody Tells You
Living As-If is not a shortcut. It doesn’t collapse the gap between where you are and where you’re going. The book still needs a publisher. The design clients still need to show up. The rent still needs to get paid.
What it does is change who you are while you’re in the gap.
Because here’s what I’ve watched happen in my own life and in the lives of people I’ve paid attention to: the people who arrive at the thing they wanted are almost never the same person who wanted it. The wanting changes them. The waiting changes them. The work of becoming changes them. And when they finally arrive at the thing… the deal, the relationship, the chapter, whatever it is, it lands on someone who was already most of the way there. The change they experienced is what allowed them to finally arrive.
The As-If isn’t the destination. It’s the person you’re building while you’re in transit.
I’m building him. Slowly, sometimes painfully. In a house I love, in a charming walkable city. Calling myself an author, a photographer, strolling to the marina, and showing up fully for the people in front of me.
That’s not pretending…
That’s embodying!
Cheers,
Your pal, Kev
DO THE THING
Find your foothold: Before you can live As-If, you need something real to stand on. Even something small. Where do you already have legitimate ground in the identity you’re stepping into? Name it. Write it down. That’s your starting point.
Close the disclaimer gap: The next time you describe what you do, say the thing without the hedge. Not “I’m kind of working on writing.” Say “I’m a writer.” Notice what happens in your body when you do.
Find where you’re already fully present: There’s probably at least one place in your life where time disappears and the noise goes quiet. That’s you living As-If without realizing it. What is it, and how do you get there more often?
Build your joy inventory: Not the generic version. The specific one. What are the two or three things that never fail to lift your baseline, even slightly? Put them in your week like an appointment. Joy doesn’t just happen. You make room for it.
Sit with the gap: Don’t rush past the discomfort of being in-between. The space between who you are and what the world has confirmed about you isn’t a problem to fix. It’s where the real work happens. You’re allowed to be in it.