What I'm learning

2013 is already 2/3 over. Can you believe that? This year has been a huge one for me in terms of transitions. I left a job that, in the short year that I was there, almost turned me into something completely unrecognizable. I started a business - well, two, actually. We moved from our little condo into a little house with our new little dog. I've formed closer bonds with new people, and learned quite a few new skills. And we've had quite a few ups and downs - career and job struggles, the frustrations of moving, planning a family in our future, and learning new ways of coping with stress. In short, it's been a real year for growth. Here are a few things I've learned:

1) Trying to please everybody is a wasted effort. I've always shied away from confrontation, because I just generally want to be liked. I've always been a bit of an introvert, too, figuring that people won't talk about me as much if I don't give them material to work with. But the fact is, people are going to talk, and they'll always find something to criticize. It's been an unexpected blow to me to find that, despite all my efforts to be Ms. Perfect, not everyone thinks I'm great! And that people tell other people that I'm not great! And they don't say everything about me to my own face! I'm not sure if it was my giant ego or just being wrapped up in my own little world, but this shocked me, and made me realize that I may as well do and say what I want after all rather than trying to be some convoluted contortion of what other people think is OK.

2) Just ask. The worst thing that can happen is that someone will say no. If they act grumpy while they do it, it's their problem, not yours.

3) It's not as bad as you think it is. You lose a client. Someone gets pissed off at you. You'll find another client. There are a bunch of people who are not pissed off at you. Get over it, move on.

4) It is possible to function on less sleep than you think. No, seriously. Some of my best work in the last 4 months has been done on 2 hours or less. That said, you also need to catch up on sleep once the busy time has passed.

5) You don't have to be busy all the time. This was so hard to figure out when I first left my job in March. I had days where I was spinning my wheels, and it sent me into a big panic. I kept wondering what I was doing wrong. The answer: nothing. I just wasn't used to having down time or having nothing to worry about, so my body was automatically sending those "panic" signals through because that's just what it was used to doing. I can't even imagine what it would've been like if I stayed at that job for more than a year, and how hard it would've been to come down off of that cliff.

6) Your work will expand to fill the time you have. This lesson is really hard for me. Give me two assignments that are completely identical in terms of scope and skill. Put a deadline on the first one and give me unlimited time to complete the second one. The first one will get done in a snap. The second one? I will work on it until I'm dead, and I'll do nothing else productive while it's pending. I will look at it, write a sentence, go check Facebook, make a burrito, come back and write another sentence, check Facebook again, play with Scout, rinse, and repeat. Then I'll complain the whole time about how long this stupid assignment took me to finish!

7) There are people who will never take ownership in anything. These are the people you work with who leave their assignments unfinished for you to pick up after. These are the people who do not hold themselves accountable and do not care that their sloppiness screws you over. These are people who shove their work off on you while they get to go home each day at 5:30 while you stay until 8 and 9pm. They think it's okay that they forget to do things, because it comes down on your head instead of theirs, and that's fine with them. They will never do more than what you ask them to do, they will never take responsibility for organizing a project, and they will often do less than what you ask them to do. At some point, you have to stop putting up with them. These people are not grown-ups, they are over-grown kids, and it's not up to you to pick up after them. It's OK to let them fail and to let them take the blame for failing.

Anyone else have any lessons from 2013 to share in the comments?

Where have you built equity?

This is not a blog post about investing money. Well, at least not directly. Investment often requires some kind of monetary expense. But really, what I'm contemplating is the more important investment - how you invest your time. In other words, how you've invested in yourself.

Money is a great example of what I'm talking about, though. I think everyone dreams about a bigger bank account, in some way or another. But to do that, you have to start with that first few bucks that you stash away.

The same is true with your career. There are the people we envision have made it big overnight. Some people may even have that good fortune. But take any successful person you wish to emulate, and if you really listen to their story, you'll find that they had to spend some not insignificant amount of time building equity in their chosen calling. The kids who made it big at 18 spent most of their teen years learning programming languages, watching their peers set trends, or just generally putting time and energy into what they wanted to do instead of engaging in under-aged drinking or other teenage antics. By the time they were ready to graduate from high school, they'd perhaps spent 2 to 4 years already taking action on what they wanted to do in life.

It takes a special kind of focus and drive to do that at a young age. It takes a really special amount of focus and drive to do that as you get older. You take on responsibilities - a family, a mortgage. What you wanted to spend your time on and how you earn a living have become two entirely different things.  After all, you write because you love it, not because you want to earn money off of it.

But what if we realized that we could build equity in a career writing, or making art, just as we can in any other career, and that it could potentially end up paying off? One trap I've fallen into time and again with any business idea I try to create is that if I don't get an immediate payoff, I'm a failure, it didn't work, it's time to start over again. How many people might end up feeling that way about their first book? I know that's something that terrifies me. What if I publish this novel that I've been putting my time, heart, and effort into, and it doesn't go anywhere? 

And that's when it helps to remember that this is only the first step in a longer journey - a bigger career. It isn't a matter of clicking "publish" but what happens leading up to that, and what happens following that, which determines where you'll end up. It's the same in any career. There are a few people I know of that got the office in the sky with the six-figure salary after graduating law school (which may or may not be the blessing it seems), but most of the attorneys I know that are making the money and getting the cases in the fields they want to work in are those that stuck with it through the grunt work in the early years. The writers that are successful - whether Indie or not - are those that stuck with it after a flop, or have been writing for years and improving their craft until they got to where they wanted to be.

So, where have you built your equity?