A bit of pep for your Monday
Oh, hi friends!
What should I write about tomorrow?
What will people be thinking about?
They don’t want to go back to work. Or maybe they do. Or maybe they don’t have work right now.
I could write about the end of the year. The holiday. Gift guides. Should I make a gift guide?
No. I don’t know. Maybe? No.
I could write about watching people finish writing their novels this year or reading about their deals in Hollywood Reporter. I could write about layoffs and budget cuts and going freelance and hacks. So many hacks. We all want hacks. We want to know how someone else does it because that makes it — whatever “it” is — feel real, feel doable.
I could write about how the truth is there are no hacks, only a series of experiments and games you play with yourself to convince you for a short time to devote the time necessary to the things necessary in order for you to feel fulfilled. There are streaks and to-do lists and mantras and gimmicks and rallying cries and timers and inbox blockers.
I could write about reading something I found which I had scribbled down in an old notebook years and years ago and thinking now, ‘This was good. How could I not see then that this was actually good?’ and being mad at myself because the rest of the notebook was empty. I thought at the time it was so far from good there was no point in continuing.
As someone who reaches for and shares the streaks and to-do lists and mantras and gimmicks, I know, I know, they do help. For a time. But I also know that all the questions I get from other people and all the questions I ask myself seem to hilariously circle around to the same issue, the same question, the same internal scream, which is:
Will you tell me I’m good enough?
It’s there when we are seeking permission to begin: Am I smart/good/business-minded enough?
It’s there when we’re thinking about gatekeepers: I can’t go on unless I get the greenlight from this fellowship or agent or collaborator or critic.
It’s there when we can’t ask for and honor our worth: I don’t know what I should charge! What if no one buys it? Who am I to ask for more money?
On so many levels, it comes back to:
Will you tell me I’m good enough? Please?
Maybe that’s relevant on the day after a holiday, maybe that’s not ever relevant to you?
But I wonder.
I just wonder.
If that is the simple subtext running through our heads, what if there’s a simple enough four-word answer? A little blanket statement, just to even things out, something we can come back to every time we wonder whether we should ask for $100 more or follow-up on that pitch or finish the novel. How silly would that be? To have a crutch. Oh wait, a mantra. Or, let’s call it…an answer.
I am good enough.
That’s all.
Because when you quiet down the questions, maybe you can start to hear the work you’re meant to be doing. The work that you’re called to do. The work that’s worth it.
For now, on a Monday morning, as you ease back into your life, maybe that idea is good enough.
And, actually, so are you.
"Remember above all things, Kid, that to write is not difficult, not painful, that it comes out of you with ease, that you can whip up a little tale in no time, that when you are sincere about it, that when you want to impress a truth, it is not difficult, not painful, but easy, graceful, full of smooth power, as if you were a writing machine with a store of literature that is boundless, enormous, endless, and rich. For it is true; this is so."
— Jack Kerouac (read the rest!) h/t @__nitch
Remembering the ease and grace and fun that can come with writing, working, and making today.
If your Thanksgiving wasn’t quite the same this year, can I suggest this clip from The Late Late Show with James Corden? It’s pure joy, created by Daniel Mertzlufft (who’s in the BMI workshop!) and featuring an incredible gang of musical theater stars. You will smile — I promise.
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You can also support my work by checking out my new motivational journal, Do It For Yourself, designed to guide you through your creative and work projects.
Thanks, as always, for reading.
Love, Kara