Generation Meh

Doesn’t matter precisely what it is, but there’s something that you want, something that keeps you up at night, something that’s the alpha and the omega of your ambition. You have a dream and you need to carve out the space and skills to pursue it while balancing everything else that’s on your plate.  Here’s how to throw yourself into and at it in style. Go get ’em tiger!

Hoard your time and energy

I turned down a freelance ghostwriting assignment recently because when I totaled up the hours that it would cost to investigate and write persuasively on topics in such a specialized field  to a level that the learned audience would expect and deserve, I realized I’d have to charge the client a billion dollars a post (slight exaggeration) to make it profitable. And even then, that billion dollars would only include my direct labor; I still wasn’t capturing the cost that giving time to this project would take away from several of my own irons in the fire.

Figure out the minimum amount of time you need to devote to other people’s stuff to maintain your quality of life (maybe this is your 40-hr/week day job, a certain number of consulting contracts you need to land over the course of a year, etc.) and don’t commit to taking on any assignments above and beyond this that don’t contribute to your world domination goals. Put a pricetag on your dream and don’t get cornered into haggling.

Talk to people

I said recently that “We should collaborate!” is the social media equivalent of “Let’s be friends!” and I absolutely believe it*. If someone is doing something interesting that aligns with your own grand plans, tell them you think it’s interesting. Ask to get involved. Invite yourself to the party. If someone says that they love what you do, check out what it is that they do to see if there are synergies. Go for cups of coffee, have Skype brainstorming dates, send professional love letters. Put your plans and ideas out there and make space in them for the involvement of other people. Let people help you.

Don’t read the comments

When going after what you really, really want, there’s always the temptation to think about the big picture, to either pour copious amounts of energy into imagining the thrill of victory or stressing about the potential agony of defeat. If you get caught up in focusing on or attempting to game the end result, you don’t get anything done in the present moment. You can’t control outcomes and you won’t get reimbursed for sunk costs. Zero in on the details. For example, instead of imagining your name atop the New York Times bestseller list or worrying that it will all be for naught if every agent in North America rejects your query letter, rein your brain in, get micro and focus on making the competitive analysis section of your planned pitch as strong as possible.

The only time to worry about bridges is precisely when you’re crossing them, not a moment before or for a moment after. Think about it like learning to ride a bike – you’re fine until you start fretting about what happens when you need to make a turn or how you’re going to navigate that bumpy patch of pavement, but as soon as you shift your attention from peddling to second-guessing, going head over handlebars becomes all but an inevitability.

*I still have my doubts about the proposed new meaning for “Let’s be friends,” though.

Although unintentional, I have a string of non-consecutive posts going in which I mention cake. I don’t know what’s up with that. I can’t even eat cake. But the baked good shoutouts shall continue unabated. Specifically, I’m thinking about MacArthur Park and the fine art of being rejected.

I write about rejection a fair bit on Forbes, mostly about increasing your tolerance to it and putting it into perspective. I think, as a rule, we’re pretty lousy at both. We tend to personalize, romanticize and amplify each rejection and give it a much greater hold over us than it deserves. There will never be another job so perfect, a girl so pretty, an apartment with such an ideal layout.  They feel unique and irreplaceable and we despair that we ever let them get away. We’ll never have that recipe again, truly.

Wrong.

There are plenty of entry-level marketing positions, boys who ride fixed gear bikes and/or recipes for German chocolate cake out there in the world. There really, really are. I’m not saying you have to apply for, make out with and/or taste test each one of them to repair your wounded ego or fix your broken heart, but you should be aware that they exist (check it out for yourself if you don’t believe me) and they’re every bit the equal of what you’re pining over. Take comfort in that. What you lost or missed or let pass you by isn’t one of a kind; it’s one of many. And the shot you screwed up or didn’t take isn’t the only one you’ll ever have. And hell, even if you miss the next one, too, you’ll be better equipped to put that loss in perspective.

Rejection is generic and cake isn’t rationed. In fact, you can even have my share.

“What do you do?”

“I’m a writer. Sorta.”

She pivots toward me, pushes her wine glass out of the way. “No ‘sorta.’ You are or you aren’t. So, are you a writer?”

“Yes, I’m a writer.”

“Good girl.”

And she is an actress. A blonde actress from Iceland who stars in indie theatre and works a day job with the government. Her name is hard to pronounce, so she tells us to call her Maggie. All of the men at the table are mesmerized. She sloshes her wine and tells stories about bad auditions.

But I’m annoyed that she beat me at my own game. That’s a question I would ask, an answer I would cajole out of someone.

Later, we will all see a play. We arrive late and have to sit up near the rafters on stools and look down on the actors’ heads. It’s hot and the dialogue is hard to hear.

Later still, Maggie and I will take the same bus home. We sit next to each other and she tells me her feelings about Broadway. She talks with her hands like I do and I watch their reflection in the window. I almost forgive her for being a better me than I am.

I think that we could be friends. Maybe.

But then she gets off the bus.

I don’t see Maggie again.

Start as big and as grandiose as possible. Scale back only if absolutely necessary. And define “necessary” very narrowly.

It’s the same logic that governs my stylist’s approach to trimming my bangs. “We can always take more off, but we can’t add it back on.” Truth. You can keep cutting and sanding and planing (different from planning) until you get your big idea or goal into a manageable form, but when you get used to a steady diet of small potatoes, it’s damn hard to imagine anything beyond baby steps and the crumbs from someone else’s table. You doubt your talent or reach or ambition could stretch any further than the end of your nose and you think that big league success is for big league people and that sweeping visions are for suckers. But it isn’t about big league people – it’s about people who see something or imagine something and their head or heart says, “WANT” and their brain says, “Okay, how?” Not “No.” Not “Get real.” Not “As if.” Maybe they can have what they want in a modified form (a slice of Boston cream pie vs. the whole cake) or maybe they’ll have to wait six months before they can have it or maybe it will require recruiting collaborators to accomplish it, but the idea itself and the sheer scope of their own ambition doesn’t scare these people away. It just starts them scheming.

It’s not about going big or going home. It’s about going big and then going home to figure out how to pull it off. And remembering that your hair will definitely shrink when it dries.

Lately, more than one person has insinuated that I have something going on. As if maybe I’d become the universe’s teacher’s pet all of a sudden and was rolling around in good luck as if it was a kiddie pool full of chocolate pudding.

Here’s the real (pudding-free) scoop.

I made a decision. Okay, I make decisions every day (hardest one is not correcting my coworker’s grammatical gaffes), but this was a major one. I said no to something big. Or rather, I said not now. And I second-guessed this choice a lot. Saying yes feels like taking a risk, shaking things up, making a change. Saying no feels like running inside and locking the door, turning down opportunity, telling your friends that you can’t come out and play because you have homework. So, I told myself that I could only say no to this if I said yes to something else. And if I was going to say yes to something else, it better be something pretty damn good. If you’re gonna turn down the cake, you best eat the pie is my philosophy. All the better if it’s lemon meringue.

And when you do say yes to pretty damn good stuff and you do say to hell with being measured and moderate, stuff happens. Maybe the stuff is confined to your head and changes in your thinking. Maybe it bleeds out (but not through your ears, that would be so bad) in your everyday life and you start figuring out that the clichés about work, success and fulfillment are off-base and what looks like preferential treatment from the universe is actually you getting results for yourself and not realizing it or being too modest to hog the glory. For example:

Love means never saying you’re tired

It’s not that doing what you love doesn’t feel like work, it’s that you don’t care that it’s work. You will push yourself ridiculously hard because it doesn’t feel that hard in the moment. It feels necessary and doable and downright exploratory. Yes, even at 1:00 AM on a Tuesday.

Appetite for rejection

It’s not that things magically click into place and people start throwing cash at you, it’s that your thinking shifts and you become absolutely ravenous when it comes to seeking out and sinking your teeth into opportunities and some of these opportunities have dollar signs attached. And maybe these opportunities pan out and maybe they don’t, but instead of moping about rejection, you are willing to do the post-mortem on your approach because you’re invested (both emotionally and from a resource perspective) in getting a yes the next time or the time after that. It becomes less about “What am I doing wrong?” and more “How do I get this right?” Big difference.

Fear the fearless

You don’t suddenly get a confidence boost, you just want whatever it is that you want more than you want to save face or avoid the possibility of mortification. Once something (or heck, even someone) matters more to you than the fear of looking stupid, you are pretty much terrifyingly efficient in your single-mindedness. And if you’re coming up against someone in this mindset? You best be prepared, because a person with no fear of being rejected and with nothing to lose is the most formidable competitor you’ll ever face. Now go read The Hunger Games and try to argue with me, okay?

Get in or GTFO

And it’s not as if collaborators come out of the woodwork to woo you with new projects. It’s that you now see potential collaborators and collaborations everywhere and you approach your interactions with a sense of purpose and gravity and laser focus that communicates to people that they can get on the train or they can get hit by it, but those are really the only two options because sh*t just got real. And you better believe that that gets a response. People respond to people with a purpose. And if you have both a purpose and the psychic buzz that comes from being in your element? You’re pretty much going to have to fight co-conspirators off with a stick.