Stop! Sucking! Day 5: Changing “must” thinking
While I was born into relative privilege, my family’s situation was not so plush that not working was ever an option.
Even if it had been financially, it would not have been an option practically. I was raised to be…well, if not a steamroller, at the very least an ox. (Hey! It’s my Chinese zodiac sign!)
Sometimes we stop because we’ve been going a million miles an hour and run slam into a brick wall (cf the rather dramatic onset of my Crohn’s disease…or your flu, for that matter.) Sometimes we stop because we run out of time. There are a lot of ways other things can stop us, whether or not we had a silent hand in the engineering of them.
Right now—today, in fact, but really, over the past few months—I’ve been struggling with stopping one thing (designing) and starting something else (er…TBD.) Part of the difficulty with the D of the TB is that fraud thinking sets in fast when I start considering other options.
In other words, try to imagine myself as a full-time writer, or an author who speaks, or a consultant who does both, and I stop myself cold. There’s strong programming in place saying I really have no business stepping outside the family business. Which is advertising. Which, if you hadn’t noticed, is well on its way to being defunct, as least as we practiced it when I was in the game. And which, while we’re on the subject, I haven’t practiced as such in almost 15 years.
On the other hand, I have actually been writing…and speaking…and really, consulting for a good 10 years. Assiduously, for five of those. However, as the Advanced Degree Fairy has not dropped from the sky to anoint me with various Certificates of Excellence in Higher Learning (and is highly unlikely to, that bitch), I continue to feel like a fraud. Even with people coming to me and asking for the help. Even with people offering me money.
Today, I was working on a project and felt myself starting to get angry. I was angry because Quark wasn’t working; I was angry because sending files back and forth has, for some reason, become like trying to get secure messages across enemy lines during a firestorm: there’s no reliable route and stuff arrives in tatters, if at all. I even thought I was angry because I hated the project or I hated my client—I hated designing, itself. I thought these things only briefly, though, before stopping myself.
I love this project. It’s dear to my heart and I’m proud of the work.
I love this client. She’s a rare creative visionary, a source of inspiration and encouragement and a dear friend. I’d do much, much more for her.
I even love designing; I just don’t love it the way someone who is genius-good at it loves it. I love it like someone whose real genius perhaps lies elsewhere.
Just because I started as a designer-designer doesn’t mean I can’t morph into an author or consultant or speaker whose world view is influenced by design. I mean, that’s my thing, right? I’m the communicatrix!
So when I stopped myself on the downward slide today, I picked up the phone and called a new maybe-client. What we call in the trade a “follow-up call.” Or, what I call, “those calls I don’t make, right after I don’t make the cold calls.” Turns out he’s a for-sure client. And instead of stopping, he’s all fired up about going.
And I? I did not stop him.
Way to go, communicatrix.
xxx
c
Image by alber via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.
TOPICS: 21 day salutes, change, Stop! Sucking!.
7 Comments, Comment or Ping
Jeremy
I love the symmetry of this. You stop. You go. He goes. You don’t stop.
If you really feel you need a degree, I have a couple of suggestions. One: design your own. Two: buy one.
Apr 14th, 2008
Dean
Something to think about …
Lost
by David Wagoner
Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you
Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you.
If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.
Apr 15th, 2008
communicatrix
Jeremy - I think my lesson with the degree is learning that having one wouldn’t make a difference with what I want to do. But I do kind of like the idea of designing my own. “Doctor of Underpants,” maybe.
Dean - That is one hell of a poem. Thanks.
Apr 15th, 2008
Jodi
I like the idea of a career/title for a day. Today, I am COO. Tomorrow I may be writer. The day after, I will be the fav auntie with a hula hoop. Thinking that I have to be or grow into one thing forever is daunting and paralyzing…
I like the idea of titles and certificates too. Yes, make them up. I go from General Jodi, to my preferred title lately, Commander. (just Commander, no name.) Other days I am not as bossy. But some days, it helps me make the A/R calls, talk about contracts and all the other grown up stuff.
Apr 15th, 2008
Earl Kabong
You have been striking chord after chord with me and now you’ve hit my feelings so exactly that I am going to file a restraining order just to get you out of my head.
I have been wrestling with demons that bear some resemblance to your own, although kind of in reverse. I get paid to write, have never been paid to do anything else, but the only reason I do it, really, is because I’m good enough to get paid for it and apparently too lazy (or frightened) to attempt making a living at anything else. I occasionally don’t mind it, but I don’t love it. I’ve never loved it and I’ve often hated it.
And I know that part of the reason I continue to write is because I’m highly skeptical of my ability to do anything else. I can’t imagine what else someone would pay me to do. It feels sometimes as if it’s the only asset I have. Which is why I cling to it, and resent it. And I feel guilty for resenting it because it beats the hell out of most people’s income-earning options. Would I rather be an accountant or a ditch digger or a hotel clerk? No, I would not.
So I’m trying to imagine myself as something other than a writer, someone able to pay the bills without all the angst and grumbling that have become part of my process. You are giving me hope that I might actually be able to pull that off.
So, thank you.
Apr 15th, 2008
communicatrix
Jodi - What an awesome idea! Greg was working with me on that back when we were doing the Hypno Project. And it sounds kind of silly, but outfits are probably good, too. Who doesn’t feel like more of a badass in a badass outfit, right?
Earl - I started writing a hella long comment, then realized you…I…the world (or at least, that slice of it who drops by here looking for answers) might be better served by putting it front & center, in its own post. B/c this is a big question, my brother. Hopefully, you’ll let me know if it’s helpful, and how it could be more so.
Apr 15th, 2008