Notebook Number Four @notebooknumberfour - Tumblr Blog

Timing versus Will

I guess that’s not the right comparison exactly but, I’m a firm believer in timing. You can’t force things to be, that aren’t mean to be.

That is unless you will them, by shear force and drive, which places like NY, and ages like twenty to thritysomething, tell you that will supersedes timing or chance or any of that semi fluffy stuff.

I met with my mentor/second father/creative director last week while I was in New York. We met at the beer garden in South Slope during happy hour, (which was a pleasant surprise since with a full time job it’s hard to catch early afternoon happy hours). He told me LA has made me soft. Already. And of course that gets to me. It’s his purpose to get to me by saying something like that.

If I’m being honest, it’s not LA. I’ve been here for going on four months with I think 3 trips back to NY in that short time.

Realistically, it’s just been the past 2.5 years of my life with no one to blame but circumstance and decision making and I guess timing.

There’s this analogy, this story that pastor CJ Mahaney told that has come to mind so many times since having taken on a full time agency job and severely paused on my own work. It’s a picture of an orphan who is finally adopted, when the orphan leaves the orphanage, the baby reaches back towards the orphanage, wanting to go back to what it knows and what it’s familiar with, unable to imagine or desire for what it is to be in a loving family, to be in a place the child couldn’t even grasp.

I’m comparing this to working for someone, full time and working for yourself, on your own project. (Not NY vs LA). Now that I finally am able to work on my own things, I don’t know how to start again.

I don’t have a plan (which is my creative director’s biggest gripe), I don’t have a strategy, I don’t have an audience demo or target market or views or uniques or followers. I have half baked ideas and a long list of hesitation.

The women I featured before somehow feel above BWOB now, which is so odd to me since the root of BWOB was/is to elevate them, to elevate women. I imagine I must’ve offended or maybe ended a relationship not well. In my youth. It’s definitely a possibility. Or maybe their growth in followers has somehow boosted their ego to such great heights.

I think being carefree and happy go lucky has it’s advantages, absolutely. But as of late, it’s been a real bummer. I think I’ve tried to be content with a full time job. And then hoping that having drinks or reading or writing or working on relationships, would fulfill that other part of me that yearns too cheerlead and encourage other people, other women. But I feel like I’m wasting time. That I’m not doing what it is I’m meant to be doing.

My creative director asked me if BWOB is a poem or if it’s a business (maybe he didn’t say business, it was less severe than business).

A poem is a nice thing that you show people, have them read, they say it’s nice and then you move on, maybe write another, maybe not. It makes me feel like I’m not just an account manager at an agency, like I’m a creative, mildly but maybe sufficiently fulfilling this other part of me.

Or if it was a forreal, something to rally people behind. If there is no excitement in me, then how will people be excited for what I’m mildly excited about?

Nothing wrong with a poem but is that what I want it to be?

I’m unsure. I’m paralyzed and frustrated. I need something to happen in my favor. Or the timing has to be right? Or I have to will it? I’m not sure.