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When I was a performing songwriter, there was one moment when I was onstage somewhere and thought, “Why on earth should I bare my soul to these people?”
Back then, most of the songs I had written were like the songs I had been hearing singer-songwriters perform for most of my life. They were confessionals about love and romance and adjacent topics. You know, feelings and stuff. This material was so entrenched that I couldn’t seem to write about anything else.
Read MoreOur family truck (we don’t have a family car) is really ugly.
A white Ford F-150, it started its life as an AT&T fleet vehicle, so it has a service body with ambulance doors in the back. It has an orange strobe light and a misshapen, rusty rack on the roof.
It has since served as a makeshift workshop, which led to a splattering of epoxy on the side that will never come off.
Read MoreExperts I’ve talked to have delicately suggested that I stop sharing new articles here every day.
“You could write just a few that are targeted to the exact problem you solve for your prospective customer,” they say. “And then you can link to those on social media.”
Yes, that is a very tidy way to do business. But that’s not what this blog is for.
Read MoreThere were a number of years where I dreaded opening my email inbox.
I just never knew who was going to have a problem that was my fault.
The fear went away — but the emails demanding my attention didn’t. There is almost always someone upset with me now, and I’ve learned to live with it.
Read MoreThe fear of criticism prevented me from sharing my writing in the past.
Especially scary was the possibility that someone might tell me how wrong I was and be right about it, sending major cracks through the foundation my work is based on.
In fact, this fear didn’t just prevent me from sharing my writing — it prevented me from writing in the first place. That may have made me blameless, but it also made me bland. I wasn’t committing to a point of view, which meant that I wasn’t clear on what my point of view actually was.
Read MoreIt used to be very difficult for me to send out a mass email to my clients. Whether I was sharing information about my policies, giving them details about an event, or offering a new service, I was deeply concerned about what they would think.
Not just they — They.
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