Generation Meh

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  • How To Go After What You Want

    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.

  • MacArthur Park And The Fine Art Of Being Rejected

    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.

  • Your Own Game

    “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.

  • No More Minor League

    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.

     

  • Why Cliches About Success Are Stupid

    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.

  • When Push Comes To Shove

    You may have noticed there have been more stories (I call ’em flash fiction because that’s about the length of my attention span) on the blog in recent months. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. Maybe these stories will all come together in a cohesive end product or maybe only a few of them will, but there’s definitely something percolating.


    I am pushy.

    Not the kind of pushy that shoves ahead of you in line at the supermarket or takes your parking space or heckles wait staff or demands attention from everyone. No, I am the kind of pushy that looks for an opening, waits for the door to swing back just a crack and then barges right in. I tell myself that if people wanted to keep me out of their messes, they would have been more diligent with the locks. So, if I am here, hunched over your kitchen table, sweeping the crumbs to the floor, peppering you with questions, mapping out a game plan, it’s because you wanted this. You wanted me here. Maybe you’re trying to ignore me. Maybe you’re sulking in the corner or making tea or trying to explain in an increasingly less-calm tone of voice about how this is terrible timing and you really can’t deal with this right now and maybe we can reschedule? Nope, no cancellations, no refunds. You asked (even if you can’t remember doing so), I answered. Now you’re stuck with me. I don’t take up much space, I promise.

    I start with questions. Well, sometimes, if you’re very nervous about this whole thing, I start with stories. I tell you something that makes you feel as if neither of us are crazy or that we’ve known each other for a very long time. And then, I get to work with the questions. I’m pretty good at this by now and I know that if I want to find out X, it probably works better to ask about Y. There are no right answers. There are answers that I like to hear because they’ll make my job easier, but I am just as interested in the harder answers or when you can’t come up with a response at all.

    This is a delicate business, such a delicate business. There is a difference between pushing you on a swing set and pushing you off a cliff, you know? I’ve gotten better at knowing the difference, but I still make mistakes.  You seem ready. I think we have a rapport. Just one more little shove. But it’s one little shove too far. It’s over then. We both know it. In theory, there should be some way to patch things back together, but I haven’t found it yet. It’s not as simple as undoing your last move and the one before that and so on until we get back to okay and I can try a different tactic. No, the damage is done.  I always regret those cases, but I try not to be too hard on myself. I pushed because that’s what I do.  And I pushed because I thought you needed it and deep down that you wanted it and maybe you did, but it just wasn’t a push in the right direction or at the right time or from the right person (that part, I’m not so good at accepting yet). I try to clean up after myself as best I can and as quickly as possible. Scoop up all of my papers, stuff all of my ideas back into my bag, take my jacket and thank you for your time. That wasn’t so bad, was it? I ask. I don’t make excuses and I don’t let you make any either. No refunds, remember?

    But those cases are getting rarer. My instinct for picking winners is improving all the time.

     

  • What If You…

    What if you didn’t back off? What if you didn’t stop to catch your breath? What if instead of two steps forward and one back, you made it three, hell, even four or five forward? Lurch, stumble, run, whatever. What if, when the going got good, you didn’t stop to consider the hows, whys and potential duration of said goodness, but you just kept going? Rocked a few boats, kicked over a few apple carts. Didn’t even stop to apologize.

    Being cautiously optimistic is prudent. Analyzing your success for lessons learned and dissecting and refining your approach so that it’s infinitely replicable is smart stuff.  Being incremental is advisable. Except when it’s not. Except when head-shrinking your happiness doesn’t make you happier, it actually bleeds out the enjoyment and the spontaneity and the momentum. And then you realize that waiting and seeing has turned into waiting and sighing.

    So, what if you don’t do that? What if you don’t get all measured and mannered, but instead keep pushing and pushing and pushing your luck as far as you think it will go and then some? I bet it will stretch a lot further than you think.

    You should do that and then you should tell me what happens.

  • What To Do When You Don’t Have An Answer

    Recently, I was asked what I wanted and I couldn’t answer. It was one of those tipsy late-night conversations in which people feel almost duty-bound to ask dramatic, probing questions and then nod along sagely with your dramatic, probing answer because our whole lives are just poignant moonlit set pieces, yes? But I couldn’t answer. And even trying to come up with an answer left me stigmatic.

    That bothered me. Words are my thing. Surety is my thing. Being the person who knows where she’s going and is already halfway there while you’re still puzzling over the map is my thing. And I didn’t have anything to say.  But I didn’t let the question drop. I kept working on it. Doggedly, even. I told myself that there was no right answer. This wasn’t a job interview trap. I didn’t have to sketch out the next 10 years right down to my future firstborn’s middle name. I just had to be able to articulate what I would like to do with my time if I had all of the resources to do it. And I just had to be honest.

    I came up with:

    • Write stuff
    • Go places
    • Have adventures
    • Meet people

    Unsurprisingly, what I happen to be doing now has elements of these things (as does what I could be doing), but not in a great enough supply that I feel as if I’m getting my fill. So I started working through my How To Get Unstuck plan (read it if you haven’t already) and plowed ahead to step 3. I started picking up threads that I had dropped. I reached out to people to say, “You know what? Everything has been nuts, but I want to pursue this idea. If you still feel the same way, let’s make it work.” And people responded enthusiastically. I also kept telling the truth, kept being inquisitive and questioned my impulse to edit at every step. Say it. Do it. Clean up only as much as is necessary. And I reached out to other people with, “Tell me more. I’m interested.” or “What do you think of this?” or “Here’s the deal.” and that mostly worked, too.  And I wrote a blog post in which I shared how and where things were and that really worked. People had been looking for a more personal connection here, something beyond pith and prescriptivism. I’ve known that for a long time now, but it’s never really felt like the right time or the right material. It probably isn’t the right time or the right material now, but I did it anyway. And I’ll keep doing it.

    This is what I’ve figured out:

    If you have your own idea, it makes you feel less like snatching someone else’s and jumping up and down on it until it’s mashed into the dirt. I get this now. And if you’re in motion, it’s hard to be mired in the mud at the same time. I get that, too. So, move. Move toward something. If it doesn’t feel good, move away from it.  Keep wandering in a big ol’ circle until something pulls you in one direction or another. Ask questions. Ask yourself. Ask others.

    And don’t be too hard on anyone who can’t answer right away.

  • Thanks For Asking

    My coworker asks if I’m well.

    “Well? Not really. Maybe well-ish, I guess?”

    “Unacceptable, Sport”

    “I’m fine. I’m here. I’m doing my job. The rest of it isn’t germane.”

    “Germans? What Germans?”

    Our internal phone system isn’t the greatest. And yes, he calls me Sport.

    The point in this is that I didn’t lie. I didn’t do that chipper little upswing at the end of the word thing where I reply with, “I’m great!” like I work retail or am auditioning for a Frosted Flakes commercial. Because, you know what? Things are not great and I am not well. I am a stress monster and a sad bastard right now. And copping to that isn’t exactly a walk in the park. It started with losing the words and now we’ve skipped quickly to not eating, with a short stop at the hilarious stigmatic Virgin Mary statue stage where my eyes involuntarily water like I have a killer pollen allergy. And it actually stresses me out even more to pretend that I’m a-okay, even though pretending to be and defaulting to manic pixie dream girl problem solver is not only pretty easy, it’s almost expected now. People like blemish-free MPDGs who preach adventure and opportunity-seizing and will use all their powers of twee perception and persuasion and adorable $%&*# whimsy to coax you down from the emotional ledge and offer you some sweet tea once you’re back on solid ground. But damn, even manic pixie dream girls get the blues, ya know?

    So, I’ve started telling the truth. And the truth is humbling and complicated and petty and mortifying and earnest and bold all rolled together and thrown up on your shoes. It’s professional and it’s personal. This is what I’m feeling. This is what I’m thinking. I want this. I don’t want that. I don’t know what I want. Maybe a drink. Maybe a clone. TBD.

    It’s not strategic. It’s not a calculated risk. It’s not courageous. It’s not meant to endear me to you. It’s half “what-if” experiment and half  “I truly do not have the energy to play along right now. Raincheck?”

    Yes, I acknowledge that it takes a certain talent to blog for two solid years in multiple venues and never give up much of substance about yourself. Part of it is natural reticence, part of it is the tone of this blog, part of it is control meets fear. So, if you know more about me as a person than the barest of character sketches, you’re in rarefied company.

    But, for some reason, I can’t lie in this space. I can avoid posting or ply you with fiction, but I can’t stand behind writing that doesn’t represent what I genuinely feel and believe in at that moment. And right now, I feel like a 14-karat mess. And I could whip up a how-to piece on combating feelings such as these (without ever admitting I experience them myself), or I could be honest with you and say that I’m pretty sad and more than a little stressed and that I honestly do not know what will or should happen next. Even know-it-alls get confused.

    “Are you well?”

    “No, I’m actually not, but thanks for asking.”

  • First Course

    I have no time for spare words. Words that get in the way of other words that tell the story I’m looking for. I am ruthless about getting rid of them. Like sweeping my arm across the table and pushing all of the small pieces to the floor. Take the tablecloth with them. Then you can put your palms facedown on the wood and know that you’re starting from somewhere solid.

    That’s when I talk the best, think the best. When it’s okay to put my elbows up, drum my fingers against the tabletop and not worry about which fork and how not to spill the water. When it’s okay if I slump down in my chair or lean all the way forward to make sure you’re really paying attention to this. Because this is where it gets important.

    Sometimes, people let me. And sometimes, you just know they will never drop that fork, so I don’t push. And sometimes, the table is already cleared when I get there.

    Those are the best times.