I have a friend who is always starting. Since I’ve known her, she’s talked about starting diets, starting career changes, starting dating, and starting all sorts of small projects. Trouble is she never really gets anywhere. Her planning never quite makes it to the action stage, which means fruition is a complete enigma to her. It’s frustrating for me because I know she’s capable of everything she dreams up. While her plans may be great, I know without some actual movement toward the goal, her talking about her latest plan will be just words echoing into space.
So is that how your career’s been going? You know you can do it – the confidence is there. Or maybe you have plans that would certainly work, but you just can’t trust yourself enough to pull them off. You’re living in the safety of inertia because planning is easy. Talking about it is a piece of cake. But doing it? Ah, that means you have to get up, apply hard work, and risk small failures.
A confession – the beginning of my freelance career was just like that. I wanted to, I knew I could, but I was stuck thinking no one would take me seriously, no one would want to pay me money, and that somehow I’d botch it up. But after a few small accomplishments and a ton of reading and studying how others were doing it, I was smarter at my work and the confidence was shored up by some small paychecks.
If I can do it, so can you. But you have to be committed to really learning. I don’t mean learning how to write (obviously the majority of you already know this), but a primer in grammar and sentence structure never hurt (numerous books exist – I lean toward college-level handbooks on grammar). More importantly, you need to get a handle on how to approach your business and what it will take for you to market for clients and actually put all those fabulous plans into action. And you have to be ready to screw up, fail in some cases, learn, and move on. Now’s not the time to be feeble or apologetic. Now’s the time to fine-tune that action plan and just jump in and do it.
So, with 2009 just a few days away, are you ready? Of course you are. But are you actually going to do anything about it?
Hear, hear!
I think it’s also learning where you want to stretch. There are certain types of clients for whom I’ve realized I simply am not interested in working. While beggars can’t always be choosers, I’m trying to really decide which companies interest me enough to pursue relationships, and which I couldn’t care less about, even if the pay is good.
While I am capable of writing about just about anything, I’d rather go first for the jobs that stimulate me the most, and also go after those that make me stretch in directions THAT INTEREST ME. If those get sparse, I can fall back to the jobs that are less interesting to me.
A lot of my planning for next year includes the types of gigs I want to pitch to, rather than just the willy-nilly I did this year.
I also have to figure out a better balance between the fiction and the non-fiction. The non-fiction has quicker turn around/pay time, but the long-term fiction is where my interests lie. So it’s keeping them in balance so that they pay in tandem.
Ready, willing and able. Get out my way in 09! 🙂
I’m posting anonymously for this one. Have you been inside my head recently? This describe me to a T!
I have all kinds of projects in the works – book proposals, article queries, Web sites that I plan to flip (I own approx. 15 domain names, but do any of them have active sites up? No…), e-books, an e-zine, etc. My problem is I fear failure and not being “good enough” so I plan and plan and plan…and never do anything.
Hi,
I guess people have dreams of doing something but in the end..fail to achieve that dream. I had problem learning English when i first started taking an English class. I was ridiculed many times by my boss. But it was okay. I guess, when we are in the process of learning, many things will just pop up trying to stop you, especially people around you.
the difference between having a bright plan and actually implementing it.. =)
by the way, good luck for 2009!
Willie, that’s awful! You were learning – anyone who would ridicule you over it shows his own weakness. Good for you for continuing despite the nastiness!