Some Advice

How are you today? It would be nice if you could say, “I’m fine. I’m happy with my life. I know what I want, and I’m working toward it.”

Okay, that’s one thing.

What about when you’re not feeling in tip-top shape? “My feet are swollen, and I know a couple of hours from now, maybe even sooner, they’re going to be hurting. Also, my throat is hurting today.” Big sigh.

Okay, that’s another thing.

Why does it have to be one or the other? Why not spend a couple of hours feeling great and then, when you start feeling dumpy, take a nap? Or, better yet, make some brownies. Or, just have a cup of tea?

Maybe you could treat yourself not as a reward for hard work, but just because.

What did you do when you were a kid learning to walk? You’d bump into things all the time. You’d fall down and cry a lot, too. But you kept trying. Moving to the other side of the room where the toys are is so much faster if you can do it walking than by rubbing your knees sore and crawling across the floor. The incentive is there. Your desire. You were only a little person, but you still had that need to be where your toys were.

The same thing happens when we grow up. You want something? Go after it. If being in a good mood means you’re going to get there sooner, well, let’s try for a good mood more often.

Okay, you say, my job is boring. The people aren’t nice, and they make me do the hardest jobs. Okay, I say, but that’s not your entire day, is it? Plus, it sounds like you could be working on acceptance and on patience. Those are always good things to work on. The hardest part of a diet is denying yourself the foods you love. Instead of cutting things out, try adding more good foods. Take this same idea and apply it to your job. Is there some skill you could learn that would help with it?

You might complain that the company would never pay for you to learn XYZ. So what? Learn it on your own.

Because I’m a writer and writing has been so good for me, let me ask you: do you write? Yes? That’s terrific. You say you only take paid writing jobs. Okay. So, what do you write about? Assignments? Are you interested in these topics? No?

I’m going to go out on a limb here and ask if you’ve ever written just for yourself? Have you ever written crap and felt better about life afterward? No? Here’s a thought. Write the crap. Save it. Save it in a journal and just write 500 words about crap. What’s crap? Complaining about something. Something stupid you would never in a million years want anybody to know about yourself. Why? Just to vent. Some people go to the gym. Writers write crap.

What happens eventually is you get through your I’m feeling sorry for myself phase and begin to peek out from under your shell. What now? Find someplace to put your pieces. Someplace like Vocal.Media, or Substack, or Medium. Maybe even on Facebook. For that matter you could create a blog at Blogger.com. It's free. It doesn’t matter if nobody reads your material; you took a major first step and got published. It’s out there for everybody to read. Don’t worry about how many people are going to read it. Somebody will come.

Eventually, you can tackle a larger project, like a book. Imagine you could be the first person in your family to have written a book. For every writer, there are tens of thousands of people who don’t write.

How do you get better at writing? Well, you write, but you also read. What do you read? Whatever your heart tells you to read. Read the kinds of books you want to write. Work your way through the classics if you want to. Read famous writers. They got to be famous because people liked to read what they wrote.

Be an example. Work on yourself before you tell others to work on their stuff. Being patient can take years and years to learn. It’s a good quality to develop. Another one is to begin achieving your dreams. Work on them in little chunks at a time. It’s like making a huge celebratory dinner for 25 people. There are lots of moving parts. Would you expect somebody who doesn’t have a lot of experience in the kitchen to be able to pull something like that off? Of course not. Practice makes perfect.

Hey, thanks for being with me this morning and reading this piece.

Pauline Evanosky