How a side hustle became a full time passion
Today I’m removing the lid on what’s possible.
This is important because these last few weeks before the end of the year can be used as a mental deep-breath break. A respite that’s ripe for reflection on what’s working/not working in your life.
It can be tempting to get stuck and ruminate on what didn’t happen as you’d hoped, but I want to offer a different course.
I believe there’s an idea in here for you.
Seven Years Ago
Just seven years ago I was in the last few weeks before retiring from a rewarding professional career as a senior marketing executive. You might imagine I would feel good, but in fact, I felt a bit nebulous.
As though an unfocused camera lens had blurred my likeness.
Earlier in the preceding eighteen month window, I’d had some disturbing and strange run-in’s. My assignments had shifted and as usual, I truly enjoyed the intellectual challenge and curiosity behind breaking ground on a new project, but for the first time in a very long time it felt like busy work. As though I’d been elbowed out of the fast kayaking of corporate waters and somehow gotten tangled up, spinning, in a side eddy.
I wasn’t used to insignificance.
Was it an invisible current of wise woman scapegoating? The slick suit shove in order to make room for bright, shiny newcomers? I had been stalled before and negotiated my way out and into ambiguous projects. Staying open to possibilities, suspending premature judgement on ideas until—like looking into a microscope of dancing cells—my team and I could nudge stand-alone concepts into cohesive strategy.
That was my jam.
But this time, for some reason, the indifference wasn’t budging. Restless with unspent energy I’d taken to exploring and trying out a new interest—creative writing—on my own time.
In hindsight, I can see that a new direction was being laid out for me.
Step by Step
Here’s how my curiosity around creative writing crystalized.
I’m at Barnes and Noble. It occurs to me to check out the writing magazines. There’s a bunch! I snatch up Poets and Writers, Writer’s Digest and the iconic lit magazine, The Sun. I subscribe. Over the next months, each time the snail mail delivers an issue I read it cover to cover. What’s writing about? I’m wondering.
One day in The Sun I read about an upcoming writer’s retreat at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California. I still have vacation days so I decide to fly out. Picture me, friends: I did not read all the website intel so I am in my neutral sweater and business casual khakis stumbling on dirt paths in my loafers amongst Birkenstocks and colorful bandanas and torn jeans who stride smoothly from cabin to cabin for classes.
And those classes! I arrive early, take detailed notes, then frantically “practice” the lesson’s puzzling 20-minute assignment (“using objects as symbols” “writing setting as a character”), until it’s time for sharing and I listen, dumfounded, as classmate after classmate raises her hand and shares exquisite, witty writing somehow manifested in that short period. I go on to my next class: Same sequence, same experience. What am I doing here? I am intimidated at the beauty and audacity of the writing I hear. I am feeling out of my depth, but oddly not quite out of place. I feel as though “Rookie” is stamped on my forehead (I am wearing a button-down after all). But for once, I am no senior executive. For once, no one expects answers from me. It is weird and fun and frightening.
This new identity I’m trying on.
I want to be a writer.
The sentence slips into consciousness. I don’t know if I can do it, but I want to.
My A+ Doer DNA kicks in. I return home and decide I must start writing. Creatively. Consistently. And with Accountability for I know myself. I’ve just experienced how very challenging non-corporate writing is and I need to build a new muscle so being accountable to other people who will shame me hard if I don’t show up could do it. I haunt the coffeemaker at work. To each friend who pauses with an empty cup, I block the carafe with a pen poised over a notepad. What’s your email address? I am sending you a weekly blog. I need you to yell at me if I don’t do it. With amazing grace (“Will do!”)—or maybe they just really need that caffeine?— everyone forks theirs over.
I bug family members, even reach out to college buddies from decades ago for their personal email addresses.
No one says no. (Do they actually think I can do this?)
Ah, but there’s one last obstacle. I am clueless on how to set up a newsletter. At work, there’s an entire IS Division and digital marketing staff of colleagues who do techie things. Not me.
I need a Millennial.
Enter my Graphic Designer Niece. Over a Panera Bread lunch, she agrees to reverse mentor me. She sets up a Mailchimp newsletter account and develops a Squarespace platform for me to publish my blog. We agree on a schedule. I’ll email her an essay on the weekend, which she’ll drop into the Squarespace template by Sunday. The newsletter will go out on Mondays.
Set!
And so my fledgling writing begins.
Power of Intention
Seven years ago, on the edge of retiring, as I prepared to turn in my ID badge and wrote thank-you notes to mentors and sponsors who had shaped my career, I was not thinking of my weekend creative writing hobby. It paled against the privilege of position I was moving out of and the proud profile I’d earned.
In fact, I didn't know then that it would take until the following September—nine months!—for me to finally feel a realization in my bones that I was never going back.
And it would be months after that for me to put 2 and 2 together. The weird negative sidelining I experienced during that last period of my career? It forced a tiny separation between workaholic me and my profession. Created a space. And in that space, I had inserted an intention: I want to be a writer.
Look how powerful stating that intention was.
One idea led to the next step, onto the next and next and next. I’ve only written about those beginning few actions but there are many, many more. At some point, I want to be a writer evolved to I want to be an author.
Setting an intention placed trust in the future. It gave me a focus and an expectation.
It attracted support from communities of people. From the relationships at work, to family and reaching back to friends from the past, and then on to meeting a new author community of amazing, smart, artistic, funny people. Purpose and passion hold a reciprocal energy. Receiving so much, it’s natural to give back, and so, intention becomes not just individual, but collective.
And to see where that intention would take me required daily discipline and wisdom and love and the radical humility to follow up on each idea that revealed itself. A dedication that required persisting despite backtracking and mistakes. A trust in abundance that inspired the next step to come to mind.
Hey, this is good stuff!
In four months I will publish my novel, Saving Vincent, A Novel of Jo van Gogh. I can’t wait for you to read it and let me know what you think. It celebrates a true story of Jo van Gogh’s audacious intention—to prove that the unsaleable art painted by her brother-in-law Vincent van Gogh had value.
Powered by Jo’s intention, artwork considered worthless ultimately became priceless.
An aim that blew the lid off of impossible.
An Invitation to Join Me
So over these next few weeks I invite you to journal your thoughts in response to the question: What’s my intention?
No holds barred. Break the mold. Defy the odds.
Push the boundaries.
It’s what I’ll be doing. Taking dictation as the thoughts fly, creating space and letting them dance. When follow-up ideas come, taking that next step.
Shall we do this together? Gather up in a safe space on Zoom to dare and say out loud what your intention is? Or what it might be? Could be? Try it out in a place that bears witness with absolute support. Recount previous examples of how after setting a goal, the steps and coincidences fell into place. If so, please reply in the comments that you’re interested and we’ll search for a date/time that works for everyone.
I want to blow the lid off of limiting beliefs.
Care to join me?
Warmly,
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