I think I will forever regard 2014 as the year which completely humbled me. I remember that in May of 2014, I started working as a full time writer with Thought Catalog. The job came out of nowhere and I was, in no way, looking for the opportunity at the time. I had just begun work on my personal blog and suddenly—curve ball!—I started working for a company after 5+ years of being my own boss. (I founded and ran a graphic design company called Shatterboxx for over five years before committing to writing full time.) I had always feared committing to writing, despite wanting to be a writer since I was a kid. I was very fearful. I was worried Id be rejected, that Id be exposed to inadequacies that I was sure were present. I thought there was no money in it and—if there was money—I wasnt good enough to be the one to earn the paycheck. I had myself convinced that I could not be prolific in any sort of consistent way. There were so many self-limiting beliefs surrounding my future as a writer that I drowned in them for years. They were so entrenched within my belief system that I took them as incontrovertible truth. This was how it was to be a writer. Writers dream. They do not do. Artists starve and suffer. They do not thrive. When it came to my writing, the most prevalent fear, though, was that I would find out my inadequacies. I was scared to try because I was afraid to find out I was not good enough, that there really was no career for me. The thing people dont always understand about dreams is that, as long as you are not actively pursuing them, they are still a hope on the horizon. The hope is oftentimes more intoxicating than the pursuit or even the achievement. Its a promise that, no matter where we are in life, we could be better. Sometimes the hope serves us so fully that we dont even realize it is why we have not taken ourselves on the journey of pursuit. Now, when I started at Thought Catalog back in May, what I feared became manifest quite quickly. None of my work connected. My numbers were abysmal. I was living out my fear, not my dream. I was insecure and convinced that my writing was not good enough. The numbers did not lie. I was not successful right away, at least not by the metrics that were being used for me. I lost all my joy for writing for many months and forgot entirely why I wanted to write in the first place. Did I truly want to write to obtain Twitter followers, pageviews, and comments? Is that how I was to evaluate my work? Nothing turned around until I became intrinsically motivated, as opposed to seeking extrinsic validation for my work. Do I like when my writing can connect with others? Of course. But, more importantly, I gauge my writing by a few maxims: 1) is this the truth as I know it right now?; 2) do I feel proud and excited to publish and share this with readers?; 3) am I having fun? I have let go entirely of the need to be adequate and, instead, have allowed myself to play, to tell the truth, and to feel proud of my work even before it has hit the eyes of others. 2014 humbled me in many ways, including this one: whenever I seek external validation, I will come up short. This was humbling, especially considering I had been quite good at accumulating external validation in my past. I feel grateful that my writing did not connect early on, otherwise I would not have found an intrinsic motivation to create and publish my work. There is no greater gift I could have been given from suffering over my perceived inadequacies. Remember that whatever pain you feel, it can most likely be synthesized into an important growth moment in your life. I think of it a lot like recycling. Nothing we experience should be wasted. We should recycle it back into our lives in a meaningful and important way. Therefore, we never have a reason to be afraid to face our lives head on.
Posted on: Sat, 10 Jan 2015 02:15:46 +0000
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