One True Sentence (Is Hangover Success Real?)
Feeling stuck. I should write more on Medium, but what content needs to live here versus on my new freelance website (HenmarCreative.com if you’re curious) versus the dark, NSF crevices of my brain?
And after writing SEO content all day every day for clients, my creativity is all tapped out.
Business-building is going well. How well do I need it to go? Do I invest all my time in scaling, growing to levels I cannot sustain myself? Where is my break-even, in terms of energy and passion?
I can sleep when I’m dead (so I’m told), but parenting (I have a 4-year-old and 2-year-old) is another matter.
Also, the honeymoon phase is over. I am still proud of my solo-woman agency. But I’m no longer in awe of myself and that I get to be my own boss every day. The goofy-grin, humble-brag giddiness is gone.
It’s a job. A job I love. But it’s still a job. Whoever said find a job you love and you’ll never a work a day in your life was lazy AF, deluded, or outright lying.
Is that the aspiration? To never have to work a day in your life? Because that state of do-nothingness hold no appeal. I want to work, but how much do I need to and to what end?
As my own boss, I can’t climb the career ladder any higher. I am the C-level suite — and the evening janitor and the account manager and the intern. What’s next? I shed a few titles and hire more people — enough so I can “work” without having to actually do anything?
I have about 6 regular monthly clients now, and some one-off projects. It’s good. It’s ample. It’s fun. And yet, it feels like it’s on pause.
Is this hangover success?
I’ve managed to eke out in a few months what should have taken me a couple of years. Maybe it just happened too quickly and now I’m a bit dazed?
Or maybe it’s fatigue. Because it’s taken more than a few months to get here — by some measures, it’s taken decades.
For most of my life I’ve known I wanted to carve out a career as some sort of a writer — amid forces yanking me away.
- “You can’t write! Or you’d have ‘made it’ by now.”
- “You can’t just write! You’re not good enough.”
- “You can’t write! You need to do analytics.”
- “You can’t write! There’s no money in it.”
I still hear those voices. I still writhe at these well-intended put-downs — designed to help me come to grips with my mediocrity, or even outright delusion.
But I write words every day and businesses pay me money for it.
That’s all I got. That’s the truest sentence I know.
Not a witty or eloquent article tonight. Nothing I plan on re-posting to LinkedIn or elsewhere. Just lots of ponderings that I’m writing down to force (discipline) myself to mint another article.
Medium pour Medium.