On Following Your Bliss

I was looking for something on Netflix the other day to watch while working out, and I settled on “The Power of Myth” (yes, I’m a bit of a nerd). If you don’t know it, this PBS miniseries from the ’80s involved discussions between Bill Moyers and Joseph Campbell about mythology, how myth works in everyday life and the mythological journey that we are all on.

Campbell talks about each person as having a dragon to slay, and that dragon will reveal to you what it is you really want to be doing with your life.

His famous shorthand for the way life ought to be lived is “follow your bliss.”

Simple, but hard

Which sounds nice — who wouldn’t want to be following their bliss? — but it also sounds completely unrealistic when you’re just trying to pay the bills and a dead end job is better than no job at all.

I get that. I also get that a lot of us don’t act on our bliss — that thing that really excites us, that will make us want to get out of bed in the morning instead of wishing it were the weekend again on Monday morning — because we’re afraid.

Afraid of failure.

Afraid of success.

Afraid of what other people will think.

Afraid of what we’ll think of ourselves.

We aren’t willing to take the plunge because it seems too hard. We don’t follow our passion because that seems like something that only people with wealthy spouses or trust funds can do.

But the truth, as Joseph Campbell would tell you, is that we all ought to be following our bliss, and to fail to leaves your life less than fulfilled.

What You Can Do About It

Of course, the advice to simply start following your bliss now, today, before it’s too late, isn’t really all that helpful.

But it’s exactly what you need to do.

Can you take a small step toward that ideal life today? Do you even know what it is? If not, that’s probably the place to start.

If freelancing is where you think your bliss is and you haven’t yet taken the plunge, maybe today’s the day to actually pick a market and write a query (or send one if you have one already written that you’ve been looking for the right home for).

It might be the day to start a blog or to brainstorm topics that you’d like to write about.

If you’re already on the road to freelancing, maybe it’s time to reevaluate your goals, look at your client list and see if you’re really being served by those clients or if they’re all heading you in the right direction.

Taking Action Myself

I’m not just writing this blog post for you. I think it’s important for all of us to take a look at how we’re spending our time and if it’s really getting us closer to our goals.

For me, this sort of soul-searching is telling me it might be time to detach from a long-time client whose work seems to be taking more time than it’s worth these days. The extra time I’ll have by not working with this company means I’ll be able to do more of the work I really want to do — and maybe even have time to write another book.

Now that would be bliss.

Don’t Make Resolutions for the New Year

This is the time of year when I’m supposed to be writing a post about New Year’s resolutions, and how every business person needs to take a good, hard look at their business or what they want to accomplish in the next year and resolve to do better than they did last year.

Resolutions don’t work

The only problem is, setting resolutions most of the time just sets you up for failure. Think about how many years you’ve resolved to lose weight, get more exercise or, in my case, finally get my office in order once and for all and keep it that way for more than a week or so.

We have the same resolutions over and over because once we mess up once, taking that extra cookie or staying away from the gym for a day, there’s a part of us that thinks the whole year is blown and thus we don’t have to try that hard anymore.

That’s ridiculous, of course, but resolutions tend to set us up for an all or nothing mentality that usually means we get exactly that: nothing. No closer to our goals, our dream life or what we really want from year to year.

there’s a better way

So what’s the right way to make forward progress without resolutions? Setting solid goals and making a plan to meet those goals.

Instead of resolving to work on your marketing efforts every day, set a goal to double your sales for the year, then think about what you have to do each day or each week to get to that point.

If you want to be more productive, instead set a goal of writing one more query (or two, or five) every week, and do what it takes to get that done.

What’s the difference between resolutions and goals? Resolutions tend to be much more vague and open-ended, where as goals can really be the basis for road maps to get you where you want to go.

The other good thing about goals is that you don’t have to feel so defeatist if you mess up. One day skipping the gym is not going to necessarily ruin a goal of losing 10 pounds in the next two months, but it will certainly wreck a resolution to go to the gym every day.

Goals allow you to make forward progress little by little every day or every week. They give you much more momentum than resolutions do, which almost feel like you’re bullying yourself.

So ditch your resolutions and give goal setting a try. See if you motivation and willingness to stick with your plans doesn’t soar.

Action Step: Beginning to Chart Your Path

Some of you are probably already freelancers, while some of you are just getting started on this crazy road. You may be looking at freelancing as a temporary way to get a little extra money, or you might be wanting to eventually freelance full-time.

Or you may not know what you want yet. That’s OK, too.

Today is all about spending some time thinking about what you might like to get out of your freelancing career. Do you want to do a little work and still keep your full-time job, would you like to work for a couple of regular clients or the occasional magazine, or are you looking for a full-time career in a particular niche?

A Sort of Road Map

It’s a good idea to have some plan of where you’re going, no matter where you are on the journey. When I started out I didn’t have much of a plan except that maybe someday in the far-off future I’d like to be able to do this full-time.

Now that I’m there, my expectations and goals still shift. I’d like to do more writing in the niche of crafts and creativity, as well as writing about how to be a successful freelancer, like I’m doing right here.

I have culled old clients and cut back on work for others to give me time to pursue goals that have become more important to me. There’s likely to be even more of that in the future. Every change has an impact on income, of course, but it also has an impact on how you feel about the work you’re doing and how you approach your day.

To me if you can’t have the ideal writing life right away, you at least need a balance of work that makes you happy and work that is OK and helps you pay the bills. That’s where I was for a long time. I’m lucky enough that right now I am in a place where I can be a lot more selective, and the vast majority of the time I enjoy what I do.

Making Your Own Plan

Planning can seem like a really foreign and unfun concept to creative types, which we as writers are. I won’t say you need a formal five-year plan; I never even wrote my plans down except maybe in my journal when I’d write about “won’t it be nice when . . .”

But knowing that you’re on a road and anticipating a couple of the twists and turns you might take along the way makes the travel a little less scary, and maybe even a bit more fun. Be reasonable but don’t be afraid to dream.

Action Step: Developing a Plan

Whether you’re just starting out as a freelancer or you’ve been in the biz for a long time, you need a plan. And a somewhat long-term plan at that.

While these days it can be difficult to look ahead when you’re really focused on what payments are coming today, this week or this month, looking even just 12 months into the future can give you a better feeling of security and the knowledge that you know where you’re going and what you’re working toward.

Planning in the Early Days

When you’re newish to freelancing, particularly if you are still working a day job full time or part time, it’s important to have a plan of how you’re going to build your business and when you want to leave your day job if that’s something you’re interested in.

My original plan when I started freelancing was to be in a place where I could quit my day job and make at least as much money as I was before within five years. It actually happened a little faster than that (my first paid clip was in late 2003 and I quit my job in the summer of 2007), but at least that gave me something to shoot for.

I knew that I wanted to focus more on repeat work assignments rather than one-off magazine articles, even though magazines can pay really well for those one-time articles. So I focused my attention on companies that needed a lot of keyword-rich articles (and actually paid decently for them), as well as blogging opportunities that would bring in regular money and, ultimately, getting in at About.com, which provides somewhat steady income at a level I’m happy with and lets me write about a topic I enjoy from all possible angles.

Those might not be your priorities, but the point is you need to know what your priorities are in order to know what sort of work will move you toward those goals and what projects don’t serve you as well.

Planning Later in the Freelance Career

There’s still plenty of room for planning once you’re more established as a freelancer. Are you happy with the direction your career has taken? Would you like to get into a different niche? Start your own website? Write a book? All these things are possible, but you need to take the time to realize you want to do them to start making them a reality.

You should never be just coasting in your career, dealing with the day-to-day things without really thinking about the future. I have lately been playing a “what if” game with myself to get me thinking about other options for my business.

What if one of your steady clients disappeared? What if your spouse lost his or her job or started freelancing as well? What if you got sick, had a baby or for some other reason weren’t able to work as much?

What would you do then? It’s good to have answers to these questions and keep your eyes open for opportunities you might want to take advantage of even if a calamity doesn’t strike.

For my part I’m looking at some different long-term and shorter-term projects I could work on for publications, sending out more magazine queries and thinking about book projects. I’m also trying to get myself organized and paring down my business to the essentials so I can get more done in less time.

Understanding for yourself what your future needs might be can help you put a renewed focus (and perhaps renewed enthusiasm as well) on your career that will only improve your outlook and your situation.

Get to Your Goal with Small Steps

The most common question I get when people learn that I built my freelance writing business to a full-time job while I was working another full-time job is: How did you do that?

It’s a really good question. I still wonder myself sometimes. But when I think about it, I know that I did it the same way I still reach goals to this day: by taking small steps and trying to do something in pursuit of my goal every day.

When you have a big goal in mind, whether it’s losing a lot of weight or starting your own freelance writing business, that goal can get pretty overwhelming when you think about it. There is probably a lot of work between where you are now and where you want to be.

Maybe you’ve never published anything before but you have a burning desire to leave your day job behind and become a full-time freelance writer. Just knowing what first step to take can be so daunting that it keeps you frozen.

(By the way, if that’s the situation you’re in, or you’re simply stuck building your freelance writing career, I can help.)

The key really is simply to start. Do something today that will move you even just a tiny bit from the life you have now to the life you want. Spend 10 minutes brainstorming ideas or 30 minutes writing a query to a magazine or answering an online ad.

Then do something again tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after that. Every small step builds on the ones before it until soon you’ve got a giant snowball of success behind you that just keeps rolling down the hill, getting bigger and bigger.

There’s a saying that the only way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time. The only way to build a freelance writing business is one step at a time, one day at a time, one purposeful action at a time.

Make a quick list of things you can do in 10, 15, 20 or 30 minutes to further your freelancing. Yours might include such things as:

• Searching for markets
• Reading job boards
• Reading magazines or websites you might like to write for
• Brainstorming story ideas
• Writing queries
• Setting up a bookkeeping system
• Researching online for a story

Each day, pick one thing off your list to focus on. This should help give you confidence to keep moving forward and the understanding that just one small action every day can get you to your goal, no matter how big.