Now that the first quarter of 2014 is winding down, I am reflecting on and re-assessing my business plan for the year. I’ve found that it’s helpful to ask myself these questions and write out the answers to translate into action plans:
1.) What do I really want to do?
2.) What do I have that can help me do that?
3.) What do I need that will help me do that?
4.) How can I get what I need?
5.) How will I know when I’ve been successful?
I realize I have some heavy lifting and changing to do to answer these questions honestly and craft a road I’m proud to build and travel. It’s exciting to see it laid out in writing. It keeps me focused and persistent, the two attributes I find I need in spades these days. Do you regularly reflect on and reassess where you are on your projects, professional and personal? What questions are most helpful for you?
In many ways, I have my dream client – me. My personal projects, Compass Yoga, Sing After Storms, and this blog – are the most meaningful work I do. They don’t pay the bills yet so I create content and programs for a variety of other clients, too. That’s also very gratifying work because I choose those clients as much as they choose me. For a long time I wanted to work with Sesame Workshop and with an Olympics-related organization. It’s been incredible to have those experiences with those clients.
I’m not sure how much longer I’ll need to take on new clients, though as long as I do I want them to be people and organizations I admire, respect, and that can teach me something new. I keep a running list of dream clients and here’s how that list looks at the present moment:
– Pixar. I’ve worked for Disney Theatrical and I think it would be incredible to learn about Pixar’s storytelling machine.
– CBS Sunday Morning. My favorite morning program that I look forward to every weekend. I love they dig up that no other news program finds.
– Charlie Rose. He might be the last true gentleman of his generation who’s still so active in news and media. We could all learn something from Charlie Rose.
– A dog-based company or organization. This could be a nonprofit, dog products company, veterinary practice, or canine services organization. Phineas is a great teacher.
– Tea. I’m a bit of a tea-fanatic and I’d love to learn more about the cultivation, processing, packaging, and sale of it.
Do you have dream clients or partners you’d like to work with?
I recently gouged out a piece of the skin on my knuckle on a cheese grater. For the first couple days I covered it with a band-aid, but what really speeds healing is exposing the wound to air. We actually have to see it, and let others see it. My cut kept getting hit every time I reached for something and then it would bleed again. I’d scrunch up my face in pain. I had to learn how to do more things with my other hand. It was annoying and ugly.
This cut on my finger was a good metaphor for any kind of wound, physical or emotional. Why do we stay wounded? Why do we let our failures, missteps, and disappointments get the best of us? Why do we hold ourselves back from healing? Because healing and transcending anything that hurts is an uncomfortable process in the short-term. It’s painful, itchy, and ugly. It’s not linear. We take some steps back before we can step forward.
However, in time, we do heal. 3 weeks into this process and my finger is nearly back to normal. The cut doesn’t hurt anymore. It’s not as ugly as it was and I learned that my other hand is good for a lot more things than I gave it credit for. In the long-run, healing is a gift because we learn so much along the way that we wouldn’t learn if the hurt never happened at all.
My friend, Blair, sent this saying to me because she thought I could appreciate it: “All great changes are preceded by chaos. ~ Deepak Chopra.” I live by it. In the theater, you get used to the chaos and since all of my early career training happened in that industry, I thrive in the madness of activity. I know what goodness comes of it if we just delve in and enjoy the ride. When life feels jumbled, chaotic, and hectic, I have to remind myself to be thankful for that energy. So much beauty will be revealed when the dust settles. When we create something, craft it with our hands and hearts, there is bound to be a lot of movement, internal and external shifts. Just enjoy it. It won’t last forever, and when it’s over you’ll miss it and look for your next great creation opportunity. Take it as it comes.
This is the power of comedy: it opens up our minds by first making us laugh and then making us think long and hard about the truth underneath that laughter. Over the weekend, I made some additional edits to my play, Sing After Storms. There’s only one pop culture reference in the play and it refers to Bill Murray’s performance in the film What About Bob?. While we often think of What About Bob? as a comedy, and it certainly is, that movie had a different long-term effect on me that only rose into my consciousness as I was writing Sing After Storms. Clinical OCD (Bob’s illness) is a debilitating, terrifying condition. It keeps people confined and isolated by an intense fear of death. It deeply affected how I think about mental illness and it’s impact on an individual’s potential in a way that a dramatic film wouldn’t have done. If we can make people laugh, we can also move them to action. It’s a lesson I’m trying to bring into my writing and it’s perhaps the toughest artistic challenge I have today. Comedy isn’t easy but I’ve seen that its rewards are so rich.
Leo laughing in the face of adversity, on-screen and off
I thought Leonardo DiCaprio had some sort of magic Hollywood wand that makes everything he touches turn to gold. I was completely wrong. Even with his passion and commitment, it took Leo 7 years to get The Wolf of Wall Street made. Like Matthew McConaughey and Dallas Buyers Club (who incidentally is also in The Wolf of Wall Street), Leo refused to give up on the film and chipped away at Hollywood until he lined up the right partners and the right funding. In our own creative pursuits, we sometimes struggle to get something to go in the direction we want it to take. We grease the skids of our own imaginations over and over again without much movement. It’s often akin to getting a car parked on ice to move. Don’t let the hard work and slow progress deter you. Keep at it knowing you’re in good company. Eventually, the ice relents (or melts) and we’re on our way.
Late at night after a long day and in the wee, still-dark hours of the morning, I’m often at my computer – reading, writing, and researching for one of my personal projects. They are labors of love – every bit as much labor as love. Every once in a while, the doubts creep in. I hear the hurtful comments of people who doubted, and probably still strongly doubt, that I’ll ever be able to do anything significant as a writer. That little voice of self-doubt pipes up in agreement.
When this happens, I think of the remarkable Maya Angelou who has long been one of my idols. When I was 31, first moved back to New York, and decided to work on becoming a writer, I learned that she also decided to focus on her writing in New York City when she was 31. Prior to that, she worked in the performing arts though with only limited success. The same was true for me. Her strength, determination, and work ethic kept her going, reaching, and striving. She has been a wonderful role model for me, in my writing and my life.
And with her example, I close the door on the doubts – my own and those of others – and just keep working, as hard as I can, with as much authenticity and passion as I can muster. She’s right. Nothing works unless we do, and I’m not afraid of work. I like it. I revel in it. I believe in its power. It raises me up and becomes its own reward. In those times, I realize that the only way to make my writing work is to keep going.
On a recent episode of How I Met Your Mother, one of the characters feels lost and unsure what to do with her life. She got some powerful advice from a stranger: “What’s the one thing you want to do with your life? Now let everything you do be in service of that.”
This is a question I’ve been wrestling with a lot lately. What’s your one contribution, the one thing you really want to point to and say, “I did that. That’s why I was here.” Don’t make any considerations other than what you want. This isn’t about what you can do, but what you want to do. Got your answer?
Mine is to create content in many forms that inspires people to live exactly the lives they want to live. I want to be known as someone who did that for every person who crosses my path in some way.
Arthur Miller gave up the theater after his play, The Man Who Had All the Luck, flopped horribly on Broadway. It ran for only 4 performances in 1944. He attempted to write novels after that, and they flopped too. So he went back to the theater and several years later finished the Tony Award-winning play All My Sons, one of the most beloved, heart-wrenching, and successful in theater history. It took him 5 years to write it and was his first successful production. At the time of its debut, it was panned critically save for Brooks Atkinson’s review in the New York Times. Mr. Atkinson is often credited with rescuing the piece from failure. 2 years later, Miller wrote Death of a Salesman in 6 weeks and it won the Pulitzer.
Miller said this about watching All My Sons for the first time with an audience:
“The success of a play, especially one’s first success, is somewhat like pushing against a door which is suddenly opened from the other side. One may fall on one’s face or not, but certainly a new room is opened that was always securely shut until then. For myself, the experience was invigorating. It made it possible to dream of daring more and risking more. The audience sat in silence before the unwinding of All My Sons and gasped when they should have, and I tasted that power which is reserved, I imagine, for playwrights, which is to know that by one’s invention a mass of strangers has been publicly transfixed.”
It would have been very easy for Mr. Miller to give up writing after his early string of failures. At that point, there was no reason to believe he would ever be successful. And yet, he kept going. He kept trying as he worked menial jobs to make ends meet while remaining passionate about his craft. All he had was raw determination.
Maybe you’ve tried to do something and it wasn’t as successful as you wanted it to be even though you gave it everything you had. Maybe you’re thinking about throwing in the towel and getting a new dream. You’re in good company. At many points, Miller considered giving up. How could he not? But he didn’t. He started again. He took the second step, and it’s that step that made all the difference, for him, for us, and for the American theater. Follow that lead.
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My only talents are intense curiosity and a freakishly strong sense of discipline. When something interests me, I go after it with a dogged determination and dedication. It’s the only way I know how to live and I wouldn’t change it. It’s taken me to places of immense beauty and introduced me to people who are kind, inspiring, and full of grace and goodness.
Curiosity and discipline have saved me over and over again throughout my life and I expect that they will go right on doing so for as long as I have breath. There is so much comfort in knowing that. It gives me a way out, up, over, and through every obstacle. It’s lets me know that even when I’m down, I won’t be down for long. Curiosity and determination will ride in on their chariot, scoop me up, and off we’ll go on a new adventure. They make every ending a new beginning.
