Because it’s Friday AGAIN. And because traditions are important. In which I cover the good stuff and the hard stuff in my week, trying for the non-preachy, non-annoying side of self-reflection.
And you get to join in if you feel like it.
The hard stuff
Breaking up with my nooz.
If you were here this week, you already know what the hardest part of my week was. After almost three years of regularly writing my beloved noozletter, I let it go. I dumped my nooz and it was hard and scary and weird.
And yeah, I know you probably think I was all strategic about this, but really I wasn’t.
Actually, my intent this week had been to go crawl into hang out in this one business forum I’m in.
(Which is, interestingly enough, facilitated by the awesome Mark Silver — who incidentally also starred in last week’s Friday Round-up as the mysterious guest forced to drink juice out of a Harley Davidson wineglass).
The plan was genius: I was going to show up and explain to my co-thinkers a little bit about what I was going through, and ask for help. And they were going to comfort me and give me good ideas. Which they totally would have.
Except that I didn’t make it that far.
I got as far as starting — but not finishing — a post where I listed some of the problems I was having with the nooz:
1. Resentment. Used to love, then to like, now kinda hating. Too much work in the back-end and too little fun all around. I wanna be hanging out here on the blog where all the fun is. Stuckness.
2. Envious of friends who have biggified blogs and who are growing their businesses like crazy without even doing the noozletter thing. What? You don’t need a nooz? Nooz to me. I want like this too!
3. My own mental health. Because doing stuff I hate? Bad for me.
4. Trusting the seachange: it’s just time. I’m done.
At that point I stopped and meditated on it. then I re-read what I’d written and realized:
Oh. Right. So I guess I don’t actually need help deciding because apparently I’ve already decided.
Right away it became a question not of “argh, what the hell do I do next?” but “okay, so what are my options?”
Did that make it easier?
Mmmm, not really. It gave me focus, which is nice. But break-ups still suck. Plus I’ve been ending relationships left and right. And it’s a lot to process and adjust to.
Among other things: taking on a brand-new business model, based on not much more than a feeling. And it’s a lot of goodbyes. Sad face.
Okay, can we move on to the good stuff? Because there was good stuff like crazy this week, and thank goodness because I needed it.
The good stuff
My clients’ dads can beat your clients’ dads at arm-wrestling.
This completely inspiring post (from a smart, creative artist I recently worked with) made my week.
We did a one-time mini-session on dissolving procrastination and shifting some stucknesses in the creative process. Well, the creativity was already there, obviously — just nothing happening with it because of some old stuckification patterns.
We got a lot accomplished in less than an hour, and had some serious fun doing it. Heather was also cool about letting me experiment on her with a brand new, uh, wackier-than-usual technique, and we got some really great results.
Anyway, here she is, having gone from pretty much not wanting to think about it to publicly blogging about the process. Which is huge.
Go read about Heather’s decision and cheer her on because she’s awesome.
Speaking of my clients and how awesome they are …
I did an emergency session over the weekend for a former client who had a huge, important, scary, horrible meeting coming up Monday that she was not looking forward to.
It sounded hellish as all get out, to be honest, and my job was to help her come up with a. strategies for not freaking out and b. useful language to get her points across and be heard.
We did both. She survived the scary, came through the meeting-from-hell with flying colors and reported that the language we came up with helped enormously.
I was super proud and happy for her, and also really excited that she was able to use the techniques and all the other stuff we worked on in the moment. Because that’s the test.
Coolest thing ever.
Someone who bought the Procrastination Dissolve-o-matic wrote this in the shopping cart:
I have to say your site is fabulous. I’d read your landing pages just for fun any day!
First of all, that’s just plain cool. Second of all, I’ve never heard of anyone reading sales copy for fun — even biggified marketing people — but whoah, shouldn’t that be an obscure hobby? Or maybe … an Olympic event? No? Fine. I’ll shut up about it.
The break-up, part 2.
Okay, I actually have to include the nooz break-up here in the “good stuff” list too, because while it was really hard and sad, it was also completely liberating.
Also, I would like to add that my gentleman friend is the kindest, most loving gentleman friend in the entire world.
He didn’t say “Oh my god, you’re going to lose all your income and all your clients and your business will go to hell”. He said “Good for you! Taking out things that cause you resentment! You’re really walking your talk.” And then I cried.
Confrontation (and rain gear!)
This one is also a mix of hard and good, that ends up all good. Remember the super expensive raincoat from last week? Well, it showed up and I hated it.
Can I go way, way off our regular topics of “changing yer habits and patterns” and “promoting that thing you do in a smart, conscious way”? Oh, good.
The raincoat I ordered was a “medium”. The raincoat I received was a tent. A muu-muu of gargantuan proportions.
It swamps me. I didn’t take pictures because it was too horrible, but just imagine yards and yards of billowing material with me poking out from somewhere in the middle, and my gentleman friend holding his stomach from laughing at me.
Normally if something is too big you just go down a size. But for this coat I’d need to go down maybe five sizes, and as far as I know they don’t make them in XXXXS.
Also: keep in mind that “small” is not really a word that anyone has ever associated with me.
I’m tall. Taller than average. Plus I’m big-boned. By which I do not mean chubby or round or whatever — if that were the case I’d just say it.
What I mean is … my bones: they are large.
And — you know, being the #2 world expert in an obscure body-mind martial-art-like training thing — I have big, crazy muscles to go with the big bones.
Which is to say: it’s patently absurd that I would wear anything under a medium. If anything, the medium should be tight.
That wasn’t the hard. The hard is that I hate confronting people and this week has been all about confronting people and then I had to return the coat. So you’re probably wondering at this point where the good part comes in. Three things.
1. Instead of avoiding confrontation (as is my wont), I called the company up and told them how I felt.
2. I employed the art of the ask and, while I didn’t get what I wanted, now at least I don’t have to pay for shipping the stupid thing back to them. And I asked instead of not asking, which for me is still pretty awesome because it’s pushing (bonus: pushing gently, not violently) against the pattern.
3. Guess what? Turns out there’s a Columbia outlet store right near my friend’s house … so I got a fabulous raincoat — from a local business — that fits — for $50. Rock. On.
It doesn’t fold up into a neat little package, and it isn’t a cool shade of blue, but hey, it didn’t cost $150 and it doesn’t make me look like Inspector Gadget when he turns into a balloon. I repeat: Rock. On.
That’s it for me ….
And yes, you’re totally welcome to join in my Friday ritual if you feel like it and/or there’s something you just want to say out loud too.
Happy weekend. Happy week to come.
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