Do you participate in writing challenges? I’ve never taken part in NaNoWriMo or anything like it, or even entered any kind of writing contest. I pay attention to them and am usually intrigued, but still stay sidelined. It could have to do with fear, which is strange. I’m not the least bit afraid to write to write samples for clients, and I never worry when I submit

work for review.

 

I hate the idea that I might not be doing something because of fear. That’s just silly, especially with the “something” would probably be fun. So, I’m going to give myself a small personal challenge: set aside a minimum of a half hour every day to work on personal projects. It doesn’t seem like much, but it’s more than I’m doing now.

 

Making time in your schedule to do the things that are important seems like a simple thing. A couple of years ago, I decided to begin dedicating time each week to fitness. It took a while to make the habit stick, even though it was something I wanted to do and really enjoyed. I’ve always made time in my life to read, and to spend time just hanging out with my family (as opposed to running here and there to scheduled events).

 

The thing is, when you decide you will spend an hour exercising, an hour writing, an hour doing household chores, a half hour reading, and then add those activities to your normal work schedule, and then make time for any family obligations, you might start to run out of hours. This is probably where most of us start whining about not having enough time. But, as I have said before, there is plenty of time to do the things that are important to you.

 

I’ll be flexible in my personal writing challenge – the post will count as today’s “personal project time.” But I will make writing my own stuff a priority. I may not be ready for the big NaNoWriMo push, but there are two or three other challenges that look interesting.

 

Do you participate in challenges? If you write for a living, do you work on personal projects also? Where do you fit that writing into your schedule?

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You know those people who never quit smiling? Who sugar coat even the worst news and serve it up with a vacant mask of a smile? Those people are just icky. Equally intolerable, though, are the ones who  always expect the worse, can’t stand kids or puppies, have innumerable health problems that they don’t mind talking about, hate their jobs and their spouses – should they be so lucky – and whine about how they just don’t have any good luck, ever.

 

Most of us fall in the middle of the miserable to happy spectrum and tend to lean to one side more one day than the next. In my life, I’ve been lucky to know two people who were able to gently remind everyone around them to look on the bright side. One was my mom and the other my aunt Betty. They were sisters-in-law, and passed away years apart, but both of them had amazingly wonderful attitudes without being falsely cheerful.

 

The world is a less shiny place without the two of them in it, but they did leave some lasting reminders to pay attention to the good stuff. People share their favorite stories about those who are gone and a couple that I’ve been told about these two cross my mind regularly. Stories about Mary Ann and Betty almost always bring smiles, just like the two of them did in actuality.

 

My mom and one of her friends, Nancy, had been shopping one afternoon and were on their way home.  Nancy said that as they were riding

along, she was complaining about all the stuff everyone always complains about – kids, bills, work, all the things that make life hard. It was right at sunset and my mom interrupted her to say, “Would you just look at that sunset? Have you ever seen anything so pretty? Wow. Just look at that!” We lived on a mountain, so no doubt, the view of the sunset really was stunning. Nancy told me that now, every time she catches herself complaining, she thinks about that day and remembers to look up and see what kind of amazing beauty she is missing.

 

Just yesterday, someone told me that Betty gave her a similar reminder. Our entire family, probably 60 or more people, took a camping trip to Dauphin Island one year on Easter weekend. A trip like that is rare for us – in fact, it’s the only one I remember – so it was really special. Nellie, another aunt, said that she got up on Saturday morning, and walked to the bathhouse with Betty, complaining about how her tooth brush got flattened in her bag, how a pine cone poked her through the tent floor all night, how yukky showering in a bathhouse is, and on and on. Betty looked at her and laughed and said, “Well, Nellie, you’re just not a happy camper today, are you?” Nellie said just that simple question reminded her of how nice it was to be with her family, at the beach, camping with a bathhouse and everything else that was good about that moment.

 

Right now is an easy time to be angry. Most of us have something to legitimately complain about. The ridiculousness of the United States congress, the insanity of the stock market, the fear of a “double dip” recession, and so many more events happening all over the world have many of us on edge. If your business is down, your income is down, and it’s possible that your attitude is down, too – with good reason.

 

While I don’t suggest that you slap a fake smile on or pretend to feel something you do not, I do firmly believe that your business will benefit if you take some time everyday to appreciate the good stuff. When you do your work fully cognizant of the beauty all around you, every person you interact with notices. It is seriously doubtful that either Mary Ann or Betty was aware of the lasting lessons they taught us just by being themselves.

 

Small talk is inevitable. What does yours say about you? Are you fearful or angry? Do you have a positive outlook that your customers or prospects can pick up on and feel good about? No matter how tough things are there are still sunsets to appreciate.

 

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For 15 years, my wedding set was in a dusty box in storage. The diamond had fallen out and instead of getting it repaired, I boxed it up for “someday.” My rings have an unusual history, and I knew nothing about the diamond. Lack of knowledge led to all sorts of questions:

-Was it really a diamond?
-Could my ring be repaired or would I need a new one?
-Was my diamond nice enough to merit the expense?
-How could I be sure an unethical jeweler wouldn’t steal my diamond and replace it with glass? Would I be able to tell?

 

I really had hoped to get the ring fixed for our 10th wedding anniversary, and took it to a jeweler a colleague recommended. He said he couldn’t tell me anything about the ring because it was too close to Christmas and he wasn’t doing any appraisals. I explained I didn’t really want a formal appraisal, and asked my questions. He said the setting could not be fixed and that I’d have to buy a new one, but still wouldn’t tell me anything about the diamond.

 

That made me sad because the engagement ring and wedding band are a set. Also, the settings the jeweler showed me were EXPENSIVE. So, the rings stayed in their dusty storage box.

 

My rings had belonged to my mom, and so were sentimental for several reasons: my mom died in a car accident when I was 16, so anything of hers feels important; my parents had a strong and happy marriage, and the rings are a symbol of that; and last but not least, they represent my own happy marriage.

 

Now, I have a friend who owns a jewelry store. We haven’t been friends for too long, and I only recently felt comfortable enough with her to ask about getting my ring fixed. When I did finally ask, she said, “Of course!” and was flabbergasted that the other jeweler told me it couldn’t be. She said he probably was just trying to sell an expensive setting. I also found out that my diamond is about 1/3 of a carat and almost perfect. She repaired it and it now lives happily on my left hand.

 

It took 10 years to reach this outcome. Ten years during which I just kept it put away and thought about it occasionally, wondering what I should do – try to save and buy a new setting or find another jeweler for a second opinion? In the meantime, life just kept on flying right by.

 

Waiting for something to happen regarding my ring turned out to be exactly the right thing to do. My friend not only fixed it, she said that it was a fairly easy fix and that she really enjoyed working on it. She didn’t even charge me for the repair. If I had tried to save the money to buy a new setting, I would have wasted at least $800 and ended up with a wedding set that didn’t even match – a worse outcome by far.

 

Although there is never any way to tell, sometimes doing nothing is the right thing to do. Of course, sometimes doing nothing will get you evicted or your lights turned off, so deciding when to do nothing is the challenge. In thinking about when I do nothing and it turns out for the best, I’ve identified a few indicators:

1. There are no deadlines. Nothing dire would happen if my ring were never fixed. I would have been sad about it, but our bills would’ve still been paid, our kids still healthy and we would have remained married. When you have a deadline, timely action is required.

2. Multiple decisions could be “right.” There wasn’t just one path to take, nor was one path more clearly visible than the others. Taking my ring to a different jeweler or buying a new setting or doing nothing were all equally appealing for different reasons.

3. No one else was impacted by my inaction. Having my  ring on my finger makes me happier than it does anyone else. It makes my dad happy because it brings back fond memories, but he doesn’t look at my hand and smile everyday the way I do. It makes my husband happy because he knows it’s something I wanted, but it wasn’t important to him either way. When you are the only one that either taking action or not will impact, then you have the freedom to do nothing without worrying about it.

4. There is no guilt associated with inaction. Many times my actions are based on how bad I will feel if I don’t take them. For example, I will feel bad if I don’t put away my clean laundry. So I do, and that is pretty much the only reason I do. No one else cares if my clothes are put away but me. I didn’t feel guilty about my ring though, and in fact, if I had spent a large amount of money on it, I probably would have felt at least a little guilty.

 

Have you ever put off taking action and had a better outcome because of it? Do you have a way of knowing when you should do something and when you should back off?  

 

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Several months ago, my daughter’s beloved Dachshund  died. Her name was Babe and she and my daughter were best friends. Babe was supposed to have been my dog, but it was love at first sight for Babe and Stevie. We were never sure exactly how old Babe was because she was given to us by a friend, who got her from someone else, who’d gotten her

from an old lady, who’d gotten her from the pound.

 

Babe was always a stinky dog, and she got stinkier with age. It took me years to house train her, and even then she hated to go outside if it was cold or rainy. In other words, she was quite a lot of work. She was worth it though, because she was loyal and sweet. Babe lived with us for about 12 years.

 

Stevie, of course, was devastated. She almost immediately started reading ads on craigslist, saying that she didn’t really want another dog, but liked reading the ads and looking at the pictures. Her younger sister, Jodi, was sure that Stevie needed another dog right away, so she also started reading classifieds and breed descriptions and thinking about what kind of dog Stevie should have.

 

Eventually, of course, they read an ad they couldn’t resist because they are soft-hearted teenage girls. It was an ad for a poodle that had been rescued. They decided to just “go check it out.” Right. They came home with the funniest looking poodle I have ever seen. She was mostly blond, with a black tail, black ears and just enough black on her nose to make it look huge. The rescuer had been calling her Dawn and Stevie promptly renamed her Sparkles, which she answered to immediately.

 

Sparkles didn’t have any teeth, and had apparently never had too much affection. I petted her a little and she became very attached – like wouldn’t get more than about a foot away from me. At first, I tried to ignore her, in the hopes she would become attached to Stevie, but Stevie is rarely home and left for Bonnaroo a week after bringing Sparkles home.

 

So Sparkles became my dog. I’ve had lots of dogs, but never one who was quite so attached as Sparkles. She cried when

I left the house and slept by the door until I came back home. She slept under my desk all day and sat with me in the evenings. One day, she got covered in grass trimmings and was completely green because she followed me while I was weed-eating. When she went out she usually walked to the driveway, did her business and came back to the door. She didn’t seem to have any desire to run around and explore.

 

Yesterday, my husband came home for lunch and let her out, (I didn’t realize she was outside) and we haven’t seen her since. I’m sure that she wandered down the driveway, then got lost and confused. I’ve walked up and down the road looking for her and have asked a couple of neighbors if they saw here, and still have some hope that we will find her. She couldn’t have gotten too far. We will post lost dog signs this afternoon and ask the rest of the neighbors if they have seen her.

 

Thinking about Sparkles wandering around in the world lost got me to thinking about being lost – and finding your way – in all sorts of situations. Whether you are lost in life, lost for a minute, or you’ve lost direction professionally, just the sensation of not knowing the way is scary. (Poor Sparkles!)

 

If you are feeling lost in your business it is especially scary because (usually) your business is your livelihood. Plus, you want to appear confident to your clients, customers and competitors, right? You don’t want the world to know you’re lost. So, you try to hold your head up with a bright, happy smile and at least try to appear to know where you are going.

 

Sometimes projecting confidence is all it takes to get you headed in the right direction. Sometimes you need a map – a to do list or a business plan or an evaluation by a professional – to help you find your way. The important thing is to acknowledge your lost feeling, then do something about it. If you let yourself get too far off track, you might not find your way back.

 

I find that constant evaluation works best for me. Setting up a plan, then revisiting every month or quarter simply doesn’t work. I need to look at it everyday, sometimes multiple times a day, and ask myself, “Is what you are doing right now part of the plan? Are you getting closer to your goals?” Other people are able to head in the general right direction and get where they want to be without such rigid adherence to a written plan.

 

I need to go now, and make some signs that might help Sparkles find her way home, but I’d love to know: What do you do when you feel lost? Are you a go-with-the-flow kind of person or do you need a set of accurate directions?

 

 

 

 

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When I was teaching, we went on professional development retreats each year. These events weren’t lavish or luxurious, but we did go to a hotel in a park in a beautiful setting and have professional speakers come talk to us about various topics. It

meant a weekend away from home, at the very end of summer, and I hated them.

 

I hated leaving my family for a weekend. I hated having to be my professional self (I always called “teacher dava” Mrs. Stewart and thought of her as an entirely different person that “regular dava”) for a whole weekend. I hated the idea of how much such a retreat must have cost, especially when compared to my annual salary.

 

But usually, the reality of the retreat wasn’t so bad. The speakers were always interesting and it was good to get excited about getting back in the classroom. It was useful to learn more about my profession. Getting to know my co-workers a little better created better understanding and made working together a little more comfortable. It wasn’t so bad.

 

The experience of having been a teacher helps me to be a better business owner. Just like I showed up on those retreats even though I didn’t want to, I sit down at my desk everyday and write for my clients, even when I don’t want to. It goes beyond simply having a good work ethic. One of the biggest complaints the teachers made about the retreat was that they felt the time would be better spent creating lesson plans or painting classrooms. Working wasn’t the problem. Showing up to do something we didn’t want to do was the problem.

 

There are parts of every job that are less fun or less interesting, but that still must be done. The odd thing is that we dread some of them so much, but then end up enjoying doing them. One task that writers often feel this way about is invoicing. Personally, I dread it and put it off until we are facing certain financial doom unless I do it, but then feel so happy and efficient when it’s done.

 

Today I am issuing a challenge: choose one task that you have absolutely been dreading – maybe some marketing, making a call you aren’t looking forward to, paying a bill, whatever – and do it. Then notice how you feel about it and let us know in the comments. (I’m going to feel like an idiot if no one does this so please, save me some embarrassment and make something up if you must.)

 

The task I was dreading? It was writing this post. I’ve been putting it off all week because writing here, in a personal way, as dava, is becoming increasingly difficult. Sometimes it feels like the more I write for others, the harder it is to identify my own voice and my own style. Now I feel better, though, just for showing up, even when I didn’t feel like it.

 

 

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