What Not To Do

My life is being affected by now by examples of what I don't want.  I've spent a lot of time in my life dealing with situations that are not right for me and I'm trying to exorcise those influences.  But what I am also trying to focus on is the lesson.  It's not about the crappy shit you're in, but what you can learn from it.

The Drummer and I have a house guest.  This guy is in his mid-fifties and a musician.  But he's not industrious like The Drummer.  He's a guy who has a lot of ideas and things he wants to do, but no means of making them happen.  I clearly have plenty of judgment around this.  I think some of that judgment comes from my own fear of becoming like that.  Yes, I have more in my background that has prepared me for the road ahead and I'm a hard worker.  But there's still that pit at the base of my stomach. But that pit pushes me, it doesn't immobilize me.  So the lesson there seems to be that I need to keep pushing so that I don't let any of my momentum stop.

The same feeling of discomfort comes from some work I'm doing for a friend of mine who has made a living doing a bunch of freelance jobs.  She's a writer like myself.  And a really talented one.  To make ends meet and to avoid a 9 to 5 job, she does a bunch of things: she ghost writes books, she writes copy for magazines and websites--she basically uses her writing skills to pay the bills.  But what she hasn't been able to do as much in recent years is write for herself.  She very lovingly passed on some work to me.  I'm kind of doing some ghost writing for her because she's got more work than she can take on right now and instead of let some of those jobs go, she's asked me to help her out.  And I realized that I really hate it.  It's some money coming in.  But I also realized that she is putting out a lot more effort than she's getting paid for.  It's not working smart.  This is another lesson: work hard, but work smart.  If I don't want to find myself in a place where I'm not doing the kind of writing I'd like to be doing, I need to keep focused.  It's not that it's not noble or necessary to bring home the bacon.  It is.  She has to work.  She's got a family to help support.  

The greater lesson is to be conscious of the life you want to create and to never let up on it.  Our house guest is a person who has just gone by without a plan and letting things happen to him.  Now he has to couch surf and rely on the good will of others.  At this point, the good will is running out.  Even The Drummer, who is patient beyond belief, has lost patience.  You can't just let things happen without having a hand in making things happen.  And with my friend, she has made choices for her personal life which affect the work choices she makes.  She's got less flexibility because she's got a family.  That's not true for everyone, but it has been true for her.

I don't want to be working for people for the rest of my life.  I have to create the work for myself and I want people to work for me.  That's why writing my own stuff is so important.  I do feel a bit of a time clock--for the unemployment to run out.  I have been able to survive on what I'm bringing in, but that's not going to be true forever.  So I have to make sure that I stick on the plan and that I'm as hard working as I like to think I am.  I have to keep going.  It is not just about talking about working or all of these wonderful things I want to do.  It's the doing.

And right now what I'm involved in: the plays I'm writing and working on theatres with, the pilots I'm writing, the contacts I'm making, the relationships I'm maintaining--all of that is working in the direction of making sure that in as short a time as possible, I'm running my own shows and that I'm also lecturing and teaching.  I want all of those things to be a part of my life.  And I am doing all of those things, as my therapist would say.  Even though I'm not getting paid (or paid much), I am doing those things.  I am saying to the universe, this is what I want to be doing.

People know me as a writer.

People know me as a teacher.

People see me as an expert in my field.

I look qualified.

I look authoritative.  

And that's because I write, I teach, I give expertise, I am qualified and I have authority in the things I write and teach and talk about.

That is what I want to do.  And the things I don't want to do are being shown to me, like a movie screen, because it keeps me focused on what it is that I want to do.  Exactly.  Because I constantly am reminding myself of what the Prize is so I can keep my Eye on it.