When you’re good, but you kinda hate it

Oh, hi friends!
 
As always, the people who read this newsletter get me to think a little deeper. Yesterday, I advocated focusing on your strengths—on considering what people ask for from you, and delivering more of that.
 
But Sara wrote in with a great observation: What happens when people ask you for something you’re good at, but which you don’t enjoy? If you keep delivering, you’re just stuck doing things you don’t really like.
 
My first response was LOL BEEN THERE!!!
 
Then I gathered myself and thought this through.
 
If you don’t know which strengths are ones you want to cultivate, you could ask yourself: Which of your many projects/ideas/hobbies originated with you? And then received positive feedback? That means you were at the root of them.
 
Or you could mutter this to yourself in the mirror every day:
 
Just because you’re good at something doesn’t mean you have to keep doing it.
 
Because you can be good at many other things—things you actually like.
 
You find those by freeing up time and space.
You find those by creating.
And you start by saying no to the other stuff.
 
Maybe tomorrow I’ll write about all the ways to say no to things you don’t enjoy!

The playwright Kristoffer Diaz always says something I need to hear.

We do what we can as well as we can, and we figure out how to keep going.

Bits of a Story You Should Read to the End

I love Oprah! There was a period where I included videos of her in the newsletter almost every day. Then I ran out of YouTube.
 
But what I also love is the ripple effect she creates. Cliché alert: Success isn’t measured by the heights you reach, but by how many people you pull up with you.
 
Sooo, naturally, I enjoyed this piece “What I Bought With My Oprah’s Book Club Money.” Tayari Jones’s book An American Marriage was chosen by O herself for the book club. The Cut talked to Jones about what she did after her success. Some tidbits I loved...
 
My mentor, the playwright Pearl Cleage, used to say to me, “You want to be paid for your writing, but you don’t want to have to write for money.” So I never planned for writing to be the way I support myself, because I didn’t want to put that pressure on it.
 
In graduate school, I had a book agent, and I was so horrible around my classmates. I’d be dropping, “Oh, I have to call my agent. Oh, my agent this, my agent that.” Then that agent dumped me, so I learned a lesson that has carried me the rest of my life: I brag about nothing, ever, because anything could be taken away in an instant. 
 
You can’t live your life like you’re always having a “moment,” and that’s why I’m keeping my day job forever. Forever! I’m going to die at my desk. I’m kidding; I think this money will actually allow me to retire earlier than I thought. Now I have the luxury of planning my future, instead of freewheeling into it.

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Thanks, as always, for reading.

Love, Kara