The weather outside is frightful

perfect: adj. /ˈpəːfɪkt/

it means either

having all the required or desirable elements, qualities, or characteristics; as good as it is possible to be, as in: “this was a perfect day”

or

absolute; complete (used for emphasis), as in: “a perfect triumph”

as in: today

as in: it’s raining so hard I can’t hear myself breathe with the sound of it hammering on my metal shed roof and my dog is in a panic and winding herself in knots around my legs but I can do nothing about the loud noises in the sky and they’re not going to hurt you and in any case rain means things grow and that means there’s much less dust so we breathe and that’s perfect.

as in: I didn’t even burn the rice perfect.

as in: I have drunk so much water I’m surprised I didn’t wash myself away perfect.

as in: I’m only this post and a long, luxurious bath away from finishing everything on my list yes I put my bath on my list self-care is important perfect.

I think I may have mentioned that building a business is hard; working for yourself is hard, and it’s so important to hold onto the victories where you find them. Perfect days take practise, like any other regime, and in the beginning they are few and far between. But as time passes, it becomes easier and easier, and soon enough you’ll find that the boost in energy you got from the last one doesn’t run out before the next one arrives.

I know that doesn’t help much on the rest of the days but if you cling by your fingernails to the memory of it you can usually find your way back.

 

 

 

 

 

Image credit: Found it here.

Things come in threes

Most days, building a business is like this:

And not for the reasons you’d think, either. It’s not about long hours or talking to lots of people or writing documents or doing designs. That stuff stimulates and excites. It gets you up in the morning, gets the creative energies zipping around your little neurons and firing up those idea machines.

No. No such luck. Mostly, working from home and starting a business is about spending hours and days alone, fighting the pull of the Netflix and finding any way possible to avoid doing the Big Hairy Thing because oh-em-gee what if people don’t like it!*

So those days are The Most days.

But some days…

Oh damn…

Some days, you get contacted by three powerful women from three powerful organisations, who all want to see you succeed and are offering to help you do it.**

Trifecta days.

<breathe it in>

<and again>

OK. Onward.

 

*If you want some more deep-divey stuff on this, I wrote about it and how I dealt with it here. A lot of what I did then has morphed into something different now, as these things are wont to do, but you may find something of value, if you are seeking ways to help your productivity.

**Shout out to my partner in all things, the beautiful and star-filled Lady Lee, whose bravery and light was instrumental in two out of these three events, and an inspiration for the third.

 

 

 

Image credits:

1. I stole it off Pinterest but I left their URL there, K!
2. I took it off a Google search but I defy anyone to identify where it came from 😉
3. Pexels delivered this one up (Isn’t it incredible?!) You can find the photographer here.

How to run for president

Earlier today, while being reluctantly swallowed by Instagram, I came across this post by Kamala Harris, one of the inspirational, powerful, uncompromising women running for President of the United States next year. I don’t know enough about these candidates or their specific platforms to have an opinion on which one I think should or will win. I just hope one of them does.

This is how Ms Harris speaks to a young girl who has asked her how to become a better public speaker, cupping her hands as her friends look on in awe.

“Remember, it’s not about you. You know something that they need to know,” she says. The girl is bursting to speak but she manages – barely – to hold her excitement at bay.

View this post on Instagram

I never miss a chance to speak with our future leaders, especially young women. One recently asked me how to become a better public speaker. My answer: “Remember, people need to know what you know!”

A post shared by Kamala Harris (@kamalaharris) on Apr 24, 2019 at 9:08am PDT

I want to talk to girls like this. I want girls to see their own futures in what I’ve done with mine. I want girls to experience their own infinite potential because I’ve wrapped my hands around theirs as they hold their words in physically, clamping their mouths shut, eyes glistening in passion and drive and wonder.

I want to influence girls like this. I want them to walk away from me feeling like they can recreate themselves.

But first, I have to do it myself.

I’ve missed a vital piece of information. I’ve been contemplating – I want to say recently, but really it’s been going on for years – why it is that I can work absolutely batshit hours, exhaust myself into a three-day depression and deliver the impossible for other people, but I can’t do it for me?

Why can’t I just get this business turning over, for me.
Why can’t I just get up early and work, for me?
Why can’t I stick to a routine, for me?
Why can’t I…?
Can’t?”
…
…
Don’t.

Why don’t I do this for me?

And then I realised: It’s because I’m making it about me. Doing stuff for yourself and caring for yourself and having bubble baths and days off to rest is all well and good and necessary but you don’t build a whole business for yourself. You build it because you have something valuable to share, and people need to know.

Best I get building.

Have you ever started a business? What were your biggest challenges and how did you deal with them? Do you also wish Kamala Harris would squish your face?

Everything seems impossible…

Any conversation that starts with “I want to be my own boss” invariably results in a stream of discouraging words from the listener. People have told me ad nauseum about how many hours you need to work, the lack of free time, the uncertain income. Every article you read about startups, they mention the unrelenting grind of 17 hour days, the constant rejection from clients and investors, the myriad little things you absolutely must remember to do for fear of all your balls falling to the ground and bouncing off in a merry little band to float away on the nearest river.

No one ever talks about what comes before that; before the long days and the investor pitches and the abandoned partners. There is a gap between deciding to do something and actually doing it. It is the widest, deepest gap you will ever have to step across. But until you do, nothing will get done. You’ll still be talking about how awesome your business idea is when you’re 70.

I’m in that gap now. It’s the one where after a couple of hours of recording finances or writing a document, I’m exhausted and finding ways to justify leaving the rest of the work until tomorrow. I wander around the house, moving coffee cups from the bedside table to the kitchen. I stand outside and stare at my lawn, planning how many boxes of grass seed I need to make it the truly luxurious carpet I aspire to grow. I check my emails, even when I know there is nothing in there. I read countless articles and call it research. I PROCRASTINATE.

Why, though? Why could I spend 12, 13, 14 hours a day sitting in an office and meeting deadlines for someone else, but I can’t do it for me? Why do I have huge bursts of energy for a week or two and then a week of feeling so flat I can’t get out of bed except to pee and occasionally feed myself? Is it depression? Is it fear? Is it laziness? Is it just a normal cycle that I haven’t noticed before?

The short answer: Yes. It’s all of those things. But also, it’s CONSEQUENCES.

When you’re working for someone else, there are consequences if you don’t do your work, or if you don’t show up for swivel chair duty. Those consequences are immediate and unpleasant; you get yelled at, you get warnings, you get fired. So you do the job. Because you must. Consequences force you into action even when your back is aching and your eyes are drooping and you feel like you’re going to burst into tears any minute.

I, of course, am not going to yell, or warn, or fire myself. Hell, I’m not even going to let myself feel guilty, because that never did anyone any good at all. So how do I go about creating consequences for not doing the work?

The answer, as hypothesised on our magical porch, where all great ideas come home to roost, is to look far future, big dreams, barely possible goals:

• If I don’t get up, I am never going to hike Machu Picchu or see the Northern Lights
• If I don’t get up, I am never going to spend months at a time with my mother
• If I don’t get up, I am never going to start a global housing foundation for creatives
• If I don’t get up, I am never going to run an incubation hub in Jozi Central
• If I don’t get up, I am never going to change the world

All these things are vital.

All these things are MINE.

All these things are impossible, unless I finish that document and send it to the lawyer. Today.

I’m up! I’m up!

 

WOTD: Liminal

It means threshold. That place between where you started and where you’re going. That place with no clear sense of what you’ll see next, you only know you’ve stepped out into it. The path to the gate is before you, but the gate itself? Formless and shifting in the swirling clouds of mist that is your Great Life Plan.

From where you start…

There’s a total whiteout beyond the gate. A blizzard. A fog. A driving rain. That shit’s dangerous. You could get lost in that. Wander off and never find your way home. Freeze to death, drown in a flash flood, fall off a cliff. Much better to stay here on the threshold, just behind the screen door, where it’s still safe and warm.

Not as safe and warm as it was inside the house, of course, but that door’s locked behind you and you already threw your keys out of the window in a fit of pique.

It was warm in there, but the air was stale and no one wanted to open any windows for fear the weather would blow in and shuffle their papers and cool their coffee too quickly.

So you threw on your warmest jacket, put your coffee in a travel mug, flung the keys, flipped everyone the bird and stepped outside. Now the jacket isn’t as warm as you thought it was, the coffee is finished and no one would open the door for you even if you knocked.

Even if you wanted to knock.

You know there’s a train out there, just out the gate, across the field, over the next hill and through the tunnel to the station. It’s warm and safe and has a power point for your computer so you don’t even have to stop working while you travel. You already bought your ticket, you just need to get there.

And we all know visibility is about where you’re standing. So until you get walking, you won’t see a thing.

Hypothermia sets in faster if you keep still.

Here goes.

To where you wind up. Apparently.