Smiling Tree Writing Lives!

Last Friday, my husband and I filed our 2009 tax return, and at the same time Smiling Tree Writing became an actual entity, recognized by the United States government. The goodness or badness of such recognition may be debatable, but the motivational power of that Employer Identification Number is not.

I’ve written here before about how many businesses I’ve planned and dreamed of owning. For the very first time, my business exists. The fact that it has a tax number means there is some expectation it will create measurable income.  Some expectations create pressure and stress, but not this one.

For the moment, I am taking great pleasure in figuring out how much I will have to save in order to pay taxes.

In the big picture this is a small step, and a meaningless one, too, unless I hustle and get some more work.  It’s the symbolism that is important right now, and I hope that the warm fuzzies I feel carry through in my voice and attitude and lead to some new accounts.

Thanks for sharing this journey, and I hope that you have a small, symbolic victory in your life as well!

Criticism and Motivation

Today, at my 9 to 5, I wrote something that I felt really good about. That is a rare occurence. The more usual pattern is that I write something, read it, think “What a load of crap,” put it aside for a day or two, come back to re-read and edit and think, “Well, that’s not too bad.”

But today, I wrote something that seemed good right away. Of course, it was for other people to use and one of those other people not happy with it. It’s not unusual. When you write for other people, you will encounter criticism – some good and constructive and some painful and probably also constructive.

Regardless of the reason, today, the criticism made me uncomfortable. The sort of uncomfortable that involves a headache, a faster-than-normal-pulse rate and an extreme effort to maintain a neutral facial expression (an effort with questionable results on my part, no doubt).

The point of contention was about style.  I had written an excellent piece of content marketing, and the person requesting changes wanted a call to action. She wanted a more traditional piece of marketing and couldn’t understand how it could be marketing without an overt demand the reader do something, buy something!

Of course, I know that the point of all marketing is to increase sales, but I also understand that people don’t enjoy being exhorted to buy, buy, buy every other sentence. My piece was designed to build trust with potential clients by bringing them useful information.  It was an article for a newsletter that would be delivered by email.

After I calmed down and made the requested changes, I started thinking about how I interact with freelance clients. They come to me for help with newsletters, their blogs, Facebook fan pages, and Twitter accounts. My freelance clients trust my judgment when it comes to marketing through social media. I don’t claim to be a social media guru, an expert or even a maven, but I do help people understand how it works and to decide if it will be useful for them.

In the end, the criticism served as a motivator, because it helped me understand my own strengths and to feel more confident about what I am good at.

A One Hour Miracle

My house is rarely clean. It’s usually cluttered, there is almost always a minimum of one or two dirty dishes, a basket of laundry waiting to be folded and put away (I HATE putting-away), more than a basket waiting to be washed, and a fine coating of dust and dog hair on top of it all.

What can I say? There are two teenage girls living here, one of whom works 25-30 hours a week and goes to school, I work full time and write part time, my husband works full time and we have three dogs…It’s gonna get messy.

So, walking the line between messy and outright nasty is a constant challenge around here. Through the years, I’ve tried just about every strategy imaginable to keep it clean – from chore charts to allowances to a half hour of required cleaning time a week and everything in between. All of it works for a week or two, then we return to our normal state of utter chaos.

Last week I tried something new. Before anyone could go anywhere on Saturday, we all four (plus an unfortunate spend-the-night friend) had to clean for one hour. The three girls put on aprons and ipods and decided to work as a team, tackling first the kitchen, then the bedroom and bathroom. My husband cleaned his “area” next to his chair (yes, it did take the whole hour) and I took on the living room.

Unbelievably, it worked! The house was cleaner than it had been for quite sometime. And, bonus, since it was relatively clean, it was easier to spend a few minutes every evening maintaining the cleanliness and this weekend there are just a few must-be-done chores. Even the plants look happier.

I don’t know how long it will last, but for now, the one hour of cleaning has motivated us all to try and keep the mess under control.

Drudgery Can Motivate

Sometimes, personal development “stuff” can feel silly. It would be nice if everyone could do what they loved doing for a living, but then who would take our money at the gas station? There will always be menial jobs that need to be done.

On the other hand, when I read about people who have made major changes in what they do for work, it does begin to feel possible. Maybe not likely, but at least possible. Either way, it’s more fun to try than not.

Even if I never end up writing for a living, through trying, I’ve met people I otherwise wouldn’t have, learned about things I didn’t know existed and expanded my thinking.  Whenever that brick wall looms in front of me, those things are comforting.

Itty Bitty, Teeny Tiny Increments

Years ago, my husband worked as a landscaper. It was grueling hard work, but he made a good hourly wage. The problem was, the hours were unpredictable. If it rained, no work. Not enough rain, no work. Snow, no work. If there was rainy weather for a week, he didn’t get a pay check at all.

Sometimes, he would talk about getting another job – any other job. The problem was that any other job wouldn’t have the same good, hourly wage he made landscaping. At the time, he made about twice minimum wage and worried what taking a lower-paying job would do to our budget. My argument was that we would be better off because we would know exactly what to expect if he had a more regular schedule.

Eventually, he did take a different job working third shift at a convenience store for much less per hour. Our budget was more stable, and it was much easier to plan for a month or two at a time.

Happily, my husband now has a job he loves and is good at and that pays far more than a convenience store. But I learned something important from his experience.

Even though he earned less money, the consistency of his pay check turned out to be the more important factor. When I think about building my freelance business, I try to apply the same logic.

For the last several months, I’ve been frustrated because it is nearly impossible to make calls to prospective clients because I work a regular, 9-5 job for someone else.  For now, that job must take priority over my budding business.  It has felt like there is no way around the problem and I’ve been tempted to stick with writing content articles and putting other, better, bigger plans aside.

Then, I remember the logic of consistency. I remember that taking a tiny action every day is more important than doing a few flashier things here and there. So I have come up with a plan to make business calls for an hour or two a week. Not much, but if done consistently there should eventually be some results.

The Winter Blahs

Sometimes, no matter what you do, there are days when it is nearly impossible to get motivated. This time of year is particularly difficult for me:

• financially it’s rough recovering from the Christmas extravaganza and paying higher heating bills
• being a warm-weather-lover, it’s hard just to get moving in the cold mornings
• the house is messier because the dogs and people are inside more often
• there’s a ton more laundry to do in the winter
• my skin is all dry and I have to wear layers of clothes (unattractive!)

I could go on, but you get the idea. From January to the end of February is probably the hardest time of the year for me.

It’s all worse because I’m supposed to be planning and beginning to implement that plan and feeling the slate is wiped clean for a new year and blah, blah, blah. Resolutions and plans usually leave me feeling overwhelmed and inadequate, which is quite the opposite of what they are supposed to do.

So, most years, I spend the first couple of weeks of January worrying myself into an itchy, hivey, stressed-out frenzy.  Such has been the case so far in 2010, too.

Once the terrible hives make their appearance, I am forced to calm down and figure out how to handle all the problems.  For the last few days, I’ve been wondering what is the best way to get motivated when you just feel totally freaked out?

The best answer I’ve come up with is:

Just suck it up.

Quit sniveling, quit worrying, quit whining and get busy!

Write the blog post you’ve been putting off, do 100 squats, take a walk (even though it’s cold out), make the call you’re dreading, send the email you are feeling guilty for not sending.  Better yet, call two or three prospective clients or send out a couple of queries everyday.  Just make something happen.

In the spring, when the world thaws, things will get easier. The day when I feel the first warm breeze, or see the first blooming flower will help erase all this winter angst. Until then, it’s going to take sheer force of will.

Am I the only one who finds this time of year especially daunting? What do people in really cold places do?

Being Up Against the Wall

Does being in a bad place motivate you?

Sometimes, being extra-super stressed out can be a great motivator.  If you know you have to meet a deadline or you will lose a client, most of us get pretty motivated to meet the deadline.

But what about bigger, stress-ier situations?  Like your car is broken down, you have no money to fix it and without a car you have no way to get to work and without a job you don’t get to eat? Is that kind of situation a motivator or does it make you shut down?

The answer probably depends on a set of complex factors–your personality, your situation and how long it’s been sucking, your environment and the people surrounding you. If you are like me, your reaction to adversity is different just about every time.

Usually, I just want to go to sleep. When things are just too hard to think about, it’s time for a nap. It’s not a good impulse to follow though, so instead, I usually try to do something, anything, to make things better. Even if I just write a Textbroker article for $4.

Sometimes, it feels like there’s nothing in the world to do to improve the situation, or worse, that it won’t do any good to even try. Those are dark days indeed. Why bother? It has always sucked, still sucks and will continue to suck as far ahead as you care to look. Danger. Danger.

During the last year, I’ve done a couple of things to try and avoid those scariest of days. Maybe they would work for other people, maybe not.

One of the most important steps has been to cultivate an attitude of appreciation and gratitude. Most days, I make a list of 5 good things–from simple, silly things like oatmeal cookies to important, serious things like good (wonderful, even!) children and a happy marriage. Then, I email the list to a random email contact. If it’s a particularly blah day, the list helps me refocus. In fact, that is probably the power of those lists: they help change the focus to the good stuff.

Another useful experiment was my personal 30 day challenge to exercise every day for 30 consecutive days. So, I only made it for 28 days, but the experiment taught me that exercise really can change your outlook, energy level and attitude. If you have the discipline to take a walk everyday or join a group fitness class your dark days might just lighten up.  Soon, I will try a 90 day personal challenge.

Finally, I made an effort to be more social during the last year, with mixed results. For years, my little family went to parties, had tons of company, went camping, visited friends and family and were generally out and about. The last 3-5 years, however, we have stayed home much more and our friends have come to visit less often. Maybe we are getting old. Maybe we have less money. Certainly, we have less energy.

Seeing people and enjoying social situations can be a mood lifter, but sometimes it’s not so good.  The results are still out on this one.

One goal I have for 2010 is to keep looking for ways to make the rough patches smoother, and would welcome suggestions. Are there specific things you do that help when times get hard? What works for you?

Dreaming Big

For as long as I have been an adult, I have enjoyed dreaming up ideas for businesses. I have thought of a clothing store, a laundry delivery service, a shoe store, of making jewelry, a book store, crocheting scarves and purses for a living, a grocery store, a custom poem service, a food co-op…the list could go on. At any given time, I have some “big idea” in mind. Although I have all these ideas and plans, I’ve never really followed through and done anything more than earn a little pocket money with any of my business ideas. Other people, though, have done a great job with some of my plans!

So far, writing has come the closest to being an actual business that will make enough profit to pay my way through the world.   Knowing that, and being committed to it, hasn’t stopped me from dreaming about other possible enterprises, though.

And all that dreaming and planning and thinking about the best way to do things feels good to me. I like to picture what my cafe or bookstore would look like and what hours it would be open and how I would set up the bookkeeping system and how I would market it and what my customers would be like.  Maybe that’s why the game the Sims is so popular.

This time, my plan is to open a restaurant that serves breakfast. There are several (all successful) restaurants in my area, but only McDonald’s serves breakfast. I am absolutely positive that a restaurant serving homemade biscuits, fresh, high quality coffee, and food made with local ingredients as much as possible would be lucrative.

Whether or not I ever open such an establishment, I have sure had fun dreaming it up!

Authenticity and Inspiration

Authenticity, like sustainability, is a word that is so overused it is just about meaningless.  When you read about how to use social media to improve your business, you will read that you must be authentic, you need to be human, you should show emotion, until you must conclude your personality should be on display when you write a blog post, say something on Facebook or post something on Twitter.  The thing is, it’s hard. It’s hard to open yourself up, to display what your really think and feel to all the world. If you write a thoroughly researched, coherent post about a something you care about–at a distance–and someone criticizes it, you probably won’t lose too much sleep.

But. If you write about something painfully real, and close and true, and someone criticizes it…Well, that’s a different story. In that case, you might stay up all night fretting about it. Even if 100 other people tell you how awesome you are, you still might obsess about the critic.

For a few months, I practiced free writing for 15 minutes every night. No matter what else was going on, I sat down and wrote for 15 minutes. I didn’t plan to use those journal entries for anything, but several months later I went back and read a few of them. The very best ones were the entries I wrote when I was pissed off. Like, ready-to-quit-my-job-get-a-divorce-move-to-a-new-city-where-nobody-would-know-me pissed off.  In fact, such times are really the only times my writing is terribly personal or emotional. It’s hard.

So, even though reading Penelope Trunk’s blog disturbs me sometimes, and Naomi Dunford makes me sad sometimes, I find both blogs inspiring. They make me feel, and that’s rare on the internet.

The Line Between Motivation and Obsession

A Google search for “personal growth” brings back 58,800,000 results. There is no lack of resources for people who want to improve themselves, learn more, make a change, be happier, reach their goals, get a better job, lose weight, build their self-esteem, make peace with the past, learn to say no…Whatever your personal demon may be there is likely plenty of information from people with the same problem who have battled and bested it. Or so they say.

Sometimes, I get a motivation boost from reading about people who have made big life changes in ways that seem healthy to me. But I always wonder, when have you gone too far? When do you stop building good habits and begin behaving compulsively?

At one time, I had the blog Get Rich Slowly in my reader and felt inspired by the story of someone who began with overwhelming debt, but wrangled his finances into order. I read the posts and comments regularly and tried to think of ways to reduce my debt and to bring in more money. Then, the blog as a whole began to bother me. Where is the line between being frugal and being a tightwad?

If you want something really badly, and your finances wouldn’t suffer if you got the thing, why would you deny yourself? Why would you continue to max out your savings when you could spend just a little and get something that you’ve wanted for a long time?  (This line of questioning may be the reason my finances are not, ahem, in the best order they could be.)

Along the same lines, when does striving to reach your goals become an unhealthy obsession? One of my daughters once had an aerobics teacher who worked out for 2 hours during the day, then went home and ran 5 miles every evening, yet worried about being fat.  I worried (needlessly, it turned out) about the effect such a role model might have on my impressionable daughter.

In my own life, I want to build a writing business. I want control of my income and of the work I do on a daily basis. I try to work on building this business somehow or other everyday. Several times a week I end up staying awake for an hour or two longer than I should to do this work. Every weekend I spend time writing and marketing. My family doesn’t get much computer time.

Right now, it doesn’t feel like an obsession. If it becomes one, will I know? How? What is the line? Can you become successful in something like running a business without being at least a little obsessed?