Why I’m giving up being purposeful

I remember the first time I wrote a post for my blog (if you do a little work, you might still be able to find it). It was a little scary, but I was committed to doing it. I paid for a domain name and hosting and everything! It was a legit website! I couldn’t back down now.

It was part of a 7-day blogging challenge. I had a writing prompt, and it felt easy enough to write from that prompt. Hitting “publish”, although uncomfortable, felt relatively safe. I told myself it would be fine. Nobody knew me, nobody knew this website. It was highly likely that nobody would read it.

I wrote a second post, then a third. Eventually I ran out of writing prompts and I had to come up with my own ideas. So I started writing about things I found interesting, questions I had, and other random things. None of it made sense, but it didn’t feel like it had to. Soon, I had readers… but they weren’t “real” readers. It was mostly my mom and a few friends. “I’ve started a blog!” I told them, proud of myself. Some had apparently been curious enough to go find it and see what I had to say. How nice of them.

Then I started sharing certain posts in a Facebook group where others were doing the same challenge. That also felt safe. We were all in the same boat. Chances were, if I sucked, they’d go easy on me. With every post, I grew more confident, so I started sharing them in other groups where I thought members might benefit from a different perspective. Over time, I gained a few more readers, some I hadn’t even met! That felt like a pretty big accomplishment. I started to see some patterns in the topics I was writing about. I was beginning to have a voice. It was starting to feel not so random anymore.

Every so often, someone left a positive comment. People seemed to like what I had to say. So I wrote some more. I asked questions. How could I help them? How could I be of service?

That makes sense, right? If I find out that my writing can really help people, why wouldn’t I want to continue doing things that are helpful?

Then, I decided to start a coaching business. This felt like a totally separate thing from my writing. I mean, I could find a way to link back to it, but at that time, I had sub-titled my blog “the philosophical ramblings of a positive psychology enthusiast”. Sure, I wanted it to help people, but I still wanted my blog to be a place where I could follow my curiosity, and think out loud.

But the coaching… it could really BE something. People make money from coaching. Coaching made sense. I was good at it, so why not? But what do I call my coaching business? If I’m going to be a real entrepreneur, I need to take this seriously. I needed a name for my business. I needed business cards to hand out to people, I needed a professional-looking website.

… Didn’t I?

But I already had a website, and thinking of a new name AND managing a second website just seemed like way too much work. So I just redesigned my current site. I guess it wouldn’t be just a blog anymore. That’s not professional anyway. The business would have to become the main focus, and the blog would have to become just one component of it.

If I’m going to be a successful entrepreneur, I have to take this seriously. My site has to look professional. *I* have to be professional.

Meanwhile, I continued writing posts for my blog. But I wanted to be more useful, more intentional, more purposeful. I chose topics that I resonated with, but made sure they could speak to others too.

Yet, my writer’s heart  wanted to continue being curious, to play around with ideas.

I felt a yearning to explore topics that “didn’t fit with my theme”. How could I categorize those? I have to build a brand, and if I write about those topics, it won’t fit with the brand.

So I pushed those ideas aside, tucked them away in an Evernote notebook. Maybe later.

I continued to write about topics that I felt might be useful, and to some degree, some of my writing DID help people.

But something was missing… still, I put it out of my mind. I had to get to work. Real entrepreneurs do the work.

Now, I was spending a lot of my spare time learning about entrepreneurship. What should I do? I need to learn about copywriting. I need to know about marketing. I need to look into building my e-mail list. I need to start doing social media. I need to engage with my readers and potential readers more. I need to be more present, more visible. I need to be more productive. I need to figure out who my target market is. I need to build products and offer workshops, and build a sales funnel. I need to sit my ass down, stop messing around, and get serious about being an entrepreneur…

And the longer I went down that line of thinking, the less I wrote. The more I told myself I needed to “do the work”, the less the ideas and inspiration for articles came. And the more my writing, when I did write, felt forced, and disingenuous.

The more I “got serious” about being an entrepreneur, the more I became stuck in the realm of “building a business”, and the less I coached and actually helped people.

Until one day, it all just… stopped.

Posts hadn’t gone up in weeks. I stopped engaging on social media. I stopped commenting on other people’s posts. I didn’t even check Facebook all that often. I even stopped hosting Local Live Your Legend meetups.

I had lost all motivation, all inspiration. Everything was just… gone.

I tried re-booting my momentum. I tried forcing myself back to work. Back to my keyboard, writing. Because that’s what real writers, real entrepreneurs do, right? They do the work, even when Inspiration doesn’t show up. They write anyway. They do the work anyway. Or so I’m told…

I posted a few things on social media. But the inspiration wasn’t really there. Everything felt slower than molasses on a cold, Canadian, January night.

I signed up for a coaching package with a great coach who would make me dig deep and help me figure out what was going on inside my head, and to some degree, she did. I uncovered some long-forgotten bits of beliefs about my worth and the value of the particular way that creativity manifests within me. It was emotional, and tiring, and fantastic.

Yet even when I felt better, and I felt the desire to “get back to work”, nothing came. The rest of my life was a whirlwind of chaotic activity. A job that sucks (or does it? maybe it’s just me), moving into a new home and trying to define a new personal creative space, a new life with my partner, getting engaged, travel to beautiful places, more semi-sucky work, training, oh and being a mom and paying bills… where would I find the time? What should I write about? What topic should I cover?

Enough already!

I pause, just for a few seconds, enough for one or two breaths. Just enough to listen, and hear my inner voice, my writer’s heart, now practically screaming until her voice is raw (because I wasn’t listening before)…

“Stop trying to structure me and put me in a box! Stop trying to be so damn prescriptive and purposeful! Our purpose, you and me and Creativity, is NOT to be helpful. Our purpose is joy.

… our purpose is joy.

You had it right, when you first started. You followed your curiosity. You pondered, out loud, on the things you learned and tried to make sense of it in the context of life.

You’re making it WAY too complicated now. You’ve been spending all this time overthinking it.

The result of following your curiosity, of being in YOUR joy, will be to help people. Because you are useless to others if you are not doing things from your place of joy. And being in your joy can only result in being of benefit to others. 

Damn, Me, you didn’t have to scream it so loud…

So with this post, I give up.

I give up trying to be intentional. I give up writing about purposeful topics. I give up trying to be professional. I give up trying to be a serious business person. I give up trying to follow other people’s paths to success.

Maybe my writing will be useful, maybe it won’t. But if, from now on, I lead with my joy and my curiosity, I have to believe that, at the very least, it’ll be fun and won’t feel like a chore anymore (because I’ll be joyful doing it), and at best, it’ll end up being useful to someone.