I had a nice kind of cheering, Stop-This-Stupid-Crap win today.

I was gearing up for a “duty connection”: extending myself to someone whom I really didn’t want to meet, much less extend myself to. Not necessarily a bad person, but almost certainly, from the context in which she presented herself, Not My Tribe.

And lo, as I was hitting “command-n” to create the email, I felt the vomitous pit of dread blurbling in my stomach, thought about actually meeting this person and how that would feel, realized that I was in no way obligated to reach out. . . and didn’t. Which, if you’ve been following along, is a major win.

It wasn’t always this easy, though—realizing I had choices, understanding what they were. I operated on my factory default settings for a looooooong time. Saying “yes” when I meant “maybe” or even “no.” Doing what I had always done because hey, it had gotten me as far as this in one piece. Not realizing that trying something else and perhaps failing at it was 10x better than not trying something else at all.

This is something I get now. Really. I may not get it 100% of the time, or as fast as I’d like (will I ever get anything as fast as I’d like, I wonder?) but I do get it. I’ve left careers that weren’t fulfilling, relationships that weren’t working, habits that were insalubrious. And sometimes, because I’m not where I’d like to be, or where I know I can be eventually, if I keep working on it, I forget that I may have useful advice for people who are currently encountering a particular bear I’ve already wrassled.

It happened in the comments section today. (I love the comments section. It’s my favorite part of my blog, because it’s not only a source of rich inspiration, community and connection, but it’s the one place where I don’t have to write everything.) Earl Kabong (not his real name, unless he’s really managed to fly under the Googledar) posted a really touching and interesting comment about the nature of his current stuckage.

Earl, you see, is a writer, and a good one, it seems: not only does he get paid to write—many people’s dreams—his pay comes exclusively from writing, something I’m pretty sure is my dream right now, or damned close to it. Moreover, he’s been a paid writer his whole working life. Which means, of course, that he’s smart enough to know that it can sound like 15 kinds of ungrateful to say he really doesn’t dig it, but that he doesn’t know what else he would do.

I get it. I do.

Back when I was an advertising copywriter, I regularly met with people who would have eaten a limb to do what I did. I was pretty good at it and worked pretty hard at it, but the truth is, I had my job because I had the native skills and the connections. In equal measure. My blessing, my curse.

It made extricating myself rather difficult. Because sure, I could quit—that’s the easy part. The hard part was dealing with all the rest of it. How do I pay my nut? What do I do that’s more fulfilling? How do I tell my father? What do I tell my father, and anyone else who asks?

And the biggest thing of all: how will I introduce myself at cocktail parties until I’m happily established in some TBD life pursuit? For me, it boiled down to two issues: money and identity. And the latter was much, much harder to deal with than the former. Poor, I could handle. Shiftless loser with no direction? Not so much.

So here are some things I’ve learned about the Full Stop/Reboot, along with some resources I found useful in making my transition:

1. Realize you’re in it for the long haul

This is a process, not a to-do item. I was unbelievably arrogant at the start of my switch, thinking I could just tackle this like any other project. It is a project, and that’s a good way to look at it. But it’s a long-term project, which means approaching it differently than the time-delimited ones I’d been used to up until then. Establish a desire. Muse. Reflect. Seek counsel. Research. Lather/rinse/repeat as often as necessary before moving on to action. Even if you’re loaded. Especially you’re loaded. But if not…

2. Get your financial ducks in a row

One thing that shocked me years later was going through tax receipts for the last full year I worked before I decided to make the change. I was appalled—physically sick—at the amount of money I’d spent on nothing. Dinners out. Trips. Stuff. And that’s what it is when you’re not fulfilled: things you’re stuffing down a hole to try to fill it.

Figure out what you’re spending and where. Figure out how much you can cut your expenses and still “pass” as a normal person in your socioeconomic station. Do it and sock the rest away. Figure out where your holes are and plug them. For me, it was learning how to cook. (That was a rough two years, and I will be forever grateful to the Chief Atheist for eating my mistakes.) Start learning that money is freedom, money is choices, and save accordingly.

And remember, unless you are part of an incredibly slender (and ever-decreasing) slice of the population, you were once happy with far less. Even if you were born to that top 5%, there was a time where you were as happy or happier playing with the box as you were the toy it encased. So we’re clear.

3. Consume and explore

Some possible good books to read: Po Bronson’s What Should I Do with My Life? and Julia Cameron’s Artist’s Way. Yes, even if you don’t want to do something artsy. It’s just a good internal excavation process.

I also heard of a good-sounding new book via Pam Slim (Escape From Cubicle Nation) called How’d You Score that Gig?. The author did a pretty hefty amount of intake interviews and research on personality types, and came up with not only stories of interesting jobs, but the types of people who’d do well in them and the actionable steps to take to acquire those jobs.

Observe. Start carrying a notebook, like you’re a reporter. When you feel a tug—at anything, however small—write it down. Hate something? Write it down. Feel a stirring of joy? Write it down. You’re looking for clues, and they come up everywhere.

4. Engage professional help

I would not be where I am were it not for my first shrink/astrologer and my current therapist (who has no nickname, but who should probably be called “The Saint”).

If you can find the right person, your “predicament” (in quotes b/c really, it’s just a stage you’re in) might be well addressed by the application of adroit personal coaching. It’s great for the goal-oriented, and brother, you’ve got a goal.

Friends are good, but in my case, the friends I had then weren’t equipped to help me make the transition. (Of course, the friends I have now are brilliant with it. What can I say—my life is an O. Henry story.) You may have a rogue uncle or old, old grammar school friend who’s living authentically and knows you and can both call you on your shit and do it in a nice way.

If not, pay someone. This does not mean you’re weak; it means you’re brave.

5. Give yourself time and patience and love

Please note: I was very bad at #5. Still struggling with it, although I’m getting better.

These big shifts? They don’t happen on your timetable. They require thought, digestion, exploration, more thought. They need room to breathe, your epiphanies. (Or room so you can notice them.)

Wander in bookstores with hours to spare. Walk on the beach. Take up yoga or meditation. Volunteer for a meaningful yet mindless and repetitive task. Knit. Whatever.

Create space for the new thing to make itself known. Yeah, it’s all woowoo and shit. You’re a reader of this blog, aren’t you? You were expecting maybe science?

The bottom line? Just because you can’t imagine it right now doesn’t mean there isn’t something out there for you that you’re equally as good, if not better, at, and that you will actually love.

I swear, this is true.

I was a pretty good copywriter. I was an okay actor. I made a decent living at both. I’m not where I need to be financially yet with The Communicatrix and may never be, but I’ve found the thing(s) I’m good at, that the world needs, and that I love to do. If, for some reason, the money does not follow in the numbers I need it to, I’m confident I can deal with it, either by reducing my standard of living or going back to a Stupid Day Job or both. But I will never again know that profound unhappiness that comes with feeling utterly adrift, mainly unfulfilled, and thinking that choice lies outside of me.

It doesn’t. Not in this part of the world, anyway—not yet. Maybe never. Maybe nowhere.

The one thing I do know about stopping the suck? Not knowing how to restart is not an excuse. The world needs you to find your passion and realize it as much as you do. Maybe more.

What one thing can you do today to start?

xxx
c

Image by Kruggg6 via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

TOPICS: 21 day salutes, change, Stop! Sucking!, work.

I spent yesterday getting coached into organization by one phenomenal couple of personal productivity experts.

It was everything I’d hoped for. And nothing I expected. (Or, shall I say, feared.)

What I feared—and you can see this coming, if you’ve thought it through—is that I didn’t clean up enough for the cleaning lady. Or balance my checkbook properly for the bookkeeper. Or any other of a number of analogies that basically boil down to Oh, god…please don’t let my complete inability to do things the Right Way reveal the Hopeless Failure of a Human Being that I truly am.

I was expecting a protracted walk-through of my lame computer file structure, my equally lame physical files, my overflowing in-basket, my scores of lists and calendars and other Helpful Tools™ creating redundancy and general chaos. Instead, we started with a surprisingly quotidian question:

“What’s a typical ‘Colleen’ day?”

And so I spun it out for them: the getting-up and getting tea. The booting-up-of-computer and making-of-bed. That first, fantastic blast of email & Twitter goodness: all the missives and blog comments and howdy-dos from my friends, real and virtual, that have popped up between bedtime and now, thanks to auto-mailers and insomniacs and my location on the West Coast. Eggs and coffee. And then…well, then a day that could be anything. All writing or a mix of writing and talking and design. A lot of, as I told everyone I met at SXSW, farting around on the Internet. A 2.3-mile walk around the Silver Lake reservoir at some point. Consistent inconsistency, from somewhere around 7am to somewhere around 10pm, seven days a week, 350-odd days a year.

They listened and smiled and nodded. Non-judgmentally. With genuine courtesy and curiosity.

Emboldened, I mentioned the soundtrack of “shoulds” that accompanied my tasks like a non-stop iTunes playlist. I should be doing something else. I should be doing this better. I should do this now, but let me deal with it later.

After taking in the entire sweep of me and my neuroses, we got to work. Which, as it turned out, meant getting all my stuff in front of me, where I could see it in one place. And learning a few simple ways to process new stuff so that as it came in, I could put it in a place where I could find it later.

Amazingly, there was no talk of best practices or Holy Grails or Right Ways of Doing Things. There was just me, and my process, and some gentle guidance towards self-discovery of the best way to support it.

On my own, I realized I was carrying around a paper calendar because I thought I should—because I had seen someone else’s paper calendar working for him. Like gangbusters. So I had tried several times to implement this paper calendar system: to map out my day to the 10-minute pod the night or the week before, and sit down each morning and follow it word for word.

It worked, a couple of times. And it felt great, having a whole day full of getting all these things done.

It also felt like a nun standing over my shoulder, guilting me into being a good girl. Or a noose around my neck—loosely tied, perhaps, and pretty…the Hermes scarf of nooses. But a noose, still.

I do not do well, you see, with being told what to do: I do well with suggestions, and the breezier, the better. I like the feeling, illusion or not, that I’m choosing my actions moment to moment.

No doubt this tendency to suspect the walls are always closing in is why marriage felt more like a straight jacket than a security blanket. I remember distinctly proposing to my then-husband that we privately and quietly divorce, but continue to maintain the outside appearance of being married. That way, we’d catch no flak from pesky outsiders, and we would have a profound and glorious shared secret: we would be choosing to stay together every single day; we would co-create our relationship as we went along.

No wonder that scheduling thing didn’t work out too well. Or the marriage, for that matter.

At some point toward the end of our day together, Jason and Jodi explained the faulty reasoning behind so many well-intentioned attempts to get organized: if I perform these steps…buy this binder…sort according to this system, I will be free.

Instead, the way to look at it is more like this:

I am free.

I can employ my freedom in service of my unique goals and gifts. By getting very clear on what those goals are, whether by assiduous self-observation or third-party assessment or giving myself the space to let them bubble to the surface, or any combination. By any means that works for me.

I can also employ my freedom to unearth my natural working style. And then, again, to find the services and methods and structure to support it.

Like anything else, it takes a little more work and finesse to find your own way in the world. It’s like the difference between couture and off-the-rack. Or styling things from the ground up vs. Garanimals. It takes a little work to find the unique sculpture locked in every slab of marble. But it’s there. And, to paraphrase old Martha Graham in her famous confab with old Agnes de Mille, if you don’t find it, you will seriously harsh on the planet’s mellow.

I wish—oh, how I wish—that there was one answer in one book, and that all I had to do was find that book. Instead, the maps to your map are in the books. Look at that person’s journey, and see what you can find in her struggles or his mishaps or their lightbulb moments that makes you tingly. The truth comes at us sideways, usually, and when we least expect it. Our job, I increasingly believe, is to prime ourselves for reception…and reflection…and synthesis.

Of course, there’s nothing wrong with getting yourself a nice, new Moleskine notebook or a sexy MP3 recorder, if they’ll make the journey sweeter. I’m down with the gadgetry.

But for me, for now, the road to enlightenment is paved with some calendars output from iCal shoved into a plain, old artist’s sketchbook with a Uniball Micro shoved down the spiral.

Wave as you pass by on your way…

xxx
c

*For those of you who have never subjected yourself to the media matrix, “Have It Your Way™” is the trademarked tagline of the Burger King corporation, and a cornerstone of their operations, marketing and positioning. Because, as anyone who’s ever tried to order a Filet-O-Fish™ with extra® tartar© sauce and No Cheese™ has discovered, having it your way is not the way of certain other major quick-service establishments.

Image by walker clevelands via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

There’s also a wealth of wonderful shots (for inspirational/idea-unsticking purposes) with the simple Flickr search of “moleskine” in the attribution/non-commercial/as-is section of Creative Commons licensing; one favorite is this one by Mike Rohde, which has a staggering comments section.

TOPICS: GTD, organizing, personal productivity, work.

I gave myself a rather extraordinary gift this year: no new clients for the first three months, to be reviewed and possibly renewed come April 1st.

This is extraordinary (meaning absolutely not the usual thing) for a few reasons:

1. I am obsessed with the idea of achievement
2. I have resident fear of living out my days eating cat food out of my shopping cart/home
3. I was raised by a workaholic who died rich (see Reason #1) and an alcoholic who died poor (see Reason #2)

Excepting the five months I was out of commission because of the Crohn’s onset, some brief cipherin’ sez I have not taken more than two weeks of complete non-work since I was 17. That’s 30 years ago, for those of you just joining us. And unless I’m missing something, I can count those two-week hiatuses on two hands with fingers left over.

30 years.

No wonder I got sick. No wonder I fell apart at 41. No wonder my relationships were fraught with difficulty; can you imagine the kind of person who’d tolerate that in a mate?

Of course, there’s an advantage to being obsessed with achievement—the kind backed up with action, anyway: you, um, tend to achieve stuff. Unfortunately, without time off for digesting, for rest, for replenishing—for the all the things that give one a little higher-up perspective—it’s easy to lose one’s way (and by “one”, I mean me). You know—this is not my beautiful house; this is not my beautiful wife. Or simply, “Rosebud.”

One gift among many given me by my ex-husband, The Chief Atheist of the West Coast, was the philosophy “Life is a series of techniques.” It amused me and then annoyed me and finally, amuses me because it is true. However, while pithy as hell (he’s a witty dude, the Chief Atheist) I have grown to believe that for clarity and usefulness, the line should be slightly amended to read thusly:

The living of life is a series of techniques

Or even more pedantically:

The successful living of life demands the acquisition of a series of techniques

Yeah, yeah—I sucked all the poetry out of it. But not everyone will have the benefit of hearing the line delivered personally by the Chief Atheist, and too many of those pithy lines get mucked up in the Big Game of Telephone. How many lives have been irretrievably fucked up by the perversion of the line, “The love of money is the root of all evil”? A lot. (Of course, those who have been attacked in their sleep by hordes of shiv-wielding Euros will probably disagree with me.)

Two of my big problems are “Eyes Bigger Than Stomach” Syndrome and its kissing cousin, “Shiny Object Syndrome” (which I believe was coined by a way-brilliant art director partner, Sherry Scharschmidt, back when you could actually make a living writing TV commercials.) Knowing my weaknesses, I’ve come up with some workarounds to help: a marketing coach who’s kind of a hard-ass; a social media guru who’s very gentle but insistent; a projects list to shame me into saying “no” or at least “maybe” when yet another irresistible opportunity pops up in my RSS feed of life. Oh, yeah—and a shrink. Sorry…make that two shrinks.

What do all these governors have in common? They give me ground-level guidance, sure, but they also provide a higher-up perspective. They are not mired in the me of me, and so can give me some reasonably objective input regarding where I’m on track and where I’m going off the rails.

This is great. Nay, this is fantastic: asking for help is a miraculous thing. Now the time has come to start giving myself some of that perspective. To stop working so that I can examine at where my Work is taking me.

I’m building in some granular hacks: one hour of enforced reading per day. A minimum of one meal or coffee with a friend per week. Five walks per week, to be sliced up however (a dog is your best partner in this exercise, pun intended.) This all falls under the rubric of this post’s sister essay, “Sometimes Joy Is the Work,” which, if you check the date on that link, is something I’ve been working on a long, long time.

But there’s also the big, scary, new experiment I mentioned up front: no new clients for 90 days. And “no” to some projects from current clients. I think this will help give me the time and space I need to understand my own big picture, or at least, the next five years of it.

This is my work, too: making sure I’m doing the right work. And that means a lot of not doing work-work: money-work, easily-explained-to-the-outside-world work.

For the record, if you run into me at a coffee shop or a meetup or SXSW this year, I may still say, “Oh, I’m a graphic designer.” It is scary to divulge too much at once, and tiring, for introverts.

But you will know what’s really going on under the hood.

Keep a good thought for me…

xxx
c

TOPICS: work.

It is Sunday.

Late in the week, late in the day. For lady-reasons I won’t get into, I’ve dramatically reduced my caffeine intake of late so it seems even later. And then there was that falafel for lunch, that pizza and beer for dinner. They didn’t do much to perk me up and put me in a writin’ mood.

There was also that vacation last week. Holy crap, that vacation. Which was great and wonderful and inspiring and realigning and all that good stuff, but did nothing for my work ethic. If anything, it drop-kicked it into the toilet and flushed twice (the cafeteria’s a long way away, as the saying goes.)

But let’s put food and rest and chemical imbalance out of the way, shall we? Because we know—or I do, and you will shortly—that none of these things are to blame for my reduced output of late, either here or elsewhere.

It’s success, pure and simple.

For whatever reason, I’ve had a good run lately here on el bloggito. Not that anything’s felt particularly good while I’m writing it—to the contrary, I’ve trembled the last few times I hit the “publish” button because I’ve wondered whether it was too: too angsty, too revealing, too showy, too plain, too revealing, too remote. And yet I’ve been getting some of the best feedback I’ve ever gotten, or gotten in a row. So what do you do for an encore when the medium demands one every…day? Two days? Week? Two weeks?

It’s this damned competitive streak in me, is what it is. Even when there’s no one to compete against, I compete against myself. A good speech or meeting or job can’t just be enjoyed for what it is—not when it’s really and truly good. Instead, it becomes the new yardstick by which all subsequent things will be judged. Especially the next one. A few times this past month, I have literally said a little prayer of thanksgiving that I did not meet with huge success in my youth, in Hollywood, in wherever. Few people have the head for it, and I’m not one of them. My head is so damned big naturally, it threatens to take over all the screen real estate available, at least vertically (moon-faced, I’m not.)

Of course, the flip side of big ego is no ego. All good or no good. There is precious little enjoyment of the “all” when you are intimate with the “no”. “No” always lurks quietly in the background, ready to take you out with one swift, silent swoop of the baseball bat. And the higher the bar gets—the better you do—the worse the fear.

Some people, as I understand it, do not live with this. Good for you! Seriously—I would wish this on no one. It’s mine to deal with, and the dealing with has gotten easier overall as time has worn on.

Still, there’s that next job. That next speech. That next blog post. It shouldn’t matter—it doesn’t matter, really, not a whit—but there it is.

So it was with a heavy heart that Guilt and I made our usual way to the library on Friday. Another week, another seven days without those three chapters written. (That speech. That @#&* blog post.) We wandered to the new arrivals section and there were a few slim volumes of interest: that book Nora Ephron wrote about her neck, another from Walter Mosley about writing, period. We grabbed the first for schadenfreude and the second for instructions.

And the very first instruction?

The first thing you have to know about writing is that it is something you must do every day—every morning or every night, whatever time it is that you have.

Nothing new here, folks. The man is right. “There’s no time to wait for inspiration.” This sitting around fretting is as much a waste of good time as watching television. And we know how I feel about that.

This post may not be my best. Nor the next. Nor, sadly, the next 50. I may never, ever write a story as compelling as those I’ve already written. It’s a risk I will have to take, every time I sit down to write again. I may suck, you may disappear, the best may all be behind us.

That does not relieve me—or you, for that matter—of putting pen to paper, metaphoric or otherwise, every morning of every day, just the same.

It is the doing. It is the trying. It is the showing up.

If we stop creating, we cease to exist. Or we just exist. And what’s the fun of that? I’d much rather be here than have been here, no matter what levels of perfection are involved.

Well, okay. That’s pretty much a total lie. But I’m going to keep showing up, all the same.

Hope you will, too…

xxx
c

Image by Ambrosio Photography via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

TOPICS: work.

Skip vacations at your own peril.

On my way up to mine, I cried no less than five times. I think. Frankly, I was so disgusted with myself, I kind of lost count.

I also spent a good portion of the trip doing 75 - 80mph, having to pee but refusing to stop because I was in a hurry to get to vacation, and worrying about the kettle I was sure I’d left on to burn down my entire apartment complex.

Oh—and there was a lovely phone fight with The BF. Because nothing says “relax and kick back” like some hating on the one you care about most.

When you are a workaholic—meaning, when you “love” your work so much you become addicted to it—it is as hard to let go of the feelings you wrap around yourself to keep it together as it is for some people to knuckle down and get to it, period. Neither is better than the other; like the man said, everything in moderation, moderation inclusive. (Of course, workaholics and our dopplegangers—would they be slackaholics?—latch onto that last bit as our saving grace/”out” clause.)

Fortunately, even assholes like me can have their rough bits worn off by long walks on the rocky coastline and a fine quality sunset cheered on with beer and a burrito. The sweet-funky, ’70s love shack I rented comes complete with everything I need to readjust my attitude: wraparound view, high-speed internet and yes, cable TV. PLUS a hideous old recliner from which to watch it.

I have work to do these next few days—work I truly love, elective work I’ve been itching to get at. And get at it I will, tomorrow morning, with a strong cup of black tea to inspire me (and a killer view of surf crashing on the rocks if that doesn’t work.)

But for now, it is me, my Archie Bunker chair and an evening of Sam Waterston et al stretched out before me.

I am so happy in my little self-love shack by the sea I could cry.

Tears of joy, of course…

xxx
c

TOPICS: burnout, exhaustion, overwork, TV, vacation, work, workaholism.