Take it on faith, take it to the heart
Have you ever been seriously distracted by something that might happen?
Have you ever been unable to fully grasp the possibilities that are in front of your life – or your business – to the point that you get nothing done?
That’s where I am.
Right now, there are two “life transforming” proposals I have out in the ether.
Our life transformers were to get back to me today. It’s late afternoon, pacific time. They are for clients that are in an echelon that we have yet to serve at Simplifilm. The clients say that they like our work, and we’re at the top of the list. Still, they’ll let us know, they say. They have the power to simply inform us of our fate.
I don’t see a way help them expedite their decision without giving up too much leverage. All I can do is wait and hope. This makes me feel impotent. Right now, it’s a fact- we’ve earned the right to pitch them with the work that we’ve done. They respected the pitch and say they were impressed. They say there’s no issues, and we’ll know – for sure – shortly. They both signaled that they believed we’d be hired. But you never know.
These are dream clients that other places want and would kill for, and that ad men wait a career to pitch.
I’m refreshing my email, I’ve composed maybe 40 messages that I haven’t sent , all trying to strike the right tone, and all trying to glean we’ll be hired or not. I am the girl that is hoping he’ll call. I’ve stalked these folks on their TechCrunch, Twitter, and Facebook accounts….and created bizarre narratives with what my clients are doing. They may never call.
I’m ridiculous.
Because I gave myself to this distraction–freely. I’ve done little of value today- this blog post at nearly 2pm is the first achievement of any kind of real value since the morning.
It took a day, but I realized a few things:
All this stuff is merely The Resistance all over again. How droll. My old foe haunts me again.Yet anoither excuse to be distracted and not do work.
Eventually, I will have my first client in this echelon. It’s obvious. Eventually, all of our clients will be in this echelon (or our work will move them there). If it happens now – versus a year from now – what does it matter? I may simply need to learn some maturity so I don’t screw it up. I’ll have a better chance next year than I do now.
We’ve never gone backwards. So at the moment, we have two possible clients that change things for us quickly. We’ll earn the others someday. So what. Today, I didn’t continue to advance my goals forward. Even if this was life or death to us – and it’s not – what will checking my e-mail a million times accomplish?
This will either happen or it won’t.
Another object lesson: when you can’t afford to wait – and someone else can – they have vast power over you. I wanted a decision made – either way. The ambiguity I wrangle consumes my focus. The client can afford put off the decision indefinitely. It’s not like if they called in 2 weeks, I’d say no. They surely realize this. At the moment, I’m merely one of many qualified vendors. I have to bring myself to where it doesn’t matter to me, either. They don’t have an urgent deadline, so it’s not plausible that the space would have sold.
This is why gatekeepers have power, and this is also why the current publishing platforms may never actually solve this problem. Gatekeepers can wait. We want the greener grass.
The fact that there are two clients in the same stage of the game makes the moments agony. How do we improve the product when we could be passing through the Arc de Triomphe?
Finally – so what? What if I never get this type of validation? Does anything I’ve done suddenly become more–or less– valid? If a giant client doesn’t come to work with us, today, does that mean they won’t ever? Did the work we do just get worse? Did the past work improve because we got the approbation of some mid-level marketing manager that has a job at a big brand?
The Resistance will get you. It got me till a moment or two ago, and then I recognized the form it took. The conclusion is obvious: repeat the same steps that got me to this point. Share my work with the right people, and target another 10 companies in the echelon I want.
You almost fooled me, Resistance. You lie in the waiting game, waiting to derail me.
Every day starts at zero, that’s the definition of going pro.
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