Kohai: I need help. I’m stuck. Knotted. Trapped. Overwhelmed. What do I do?
Senpai: What do you want to do?
Kohai: I want to not be stuck. I want to be writing, and publishing my writing. I’ve written before, so I’m not worried about my fundamental ability to write. But I haven’t been writing lately. I think it’s because I have too many things competing for my attention and I don’t have clarity about what I should focus on.
Senpai: What are the things competing for your attention?
Kohai: So. A few things. One, I need to make money to pay for some important personal expenses. I can’t go into too much detail about that right now. I’ve written and published two ebooks. I could do more marketing to sell more books to make more money. People like these ebooks, have reviewed them positively. But I’m not entirely satisfied with the books myself. I want them to be updated before I can feel comfortable doing more marketing. But updating the books feels like a daunting pair of projects. Every time I have attempted to revisit those projects, I end up getting swept up in all sorts of secondary concerns. I suppose, in talking to you, it becomes clearer that I should define what the primary concerns are. The primary concerns right now, in the context of “I need to make more money to feel financially secure”, are getting the books to a state of polish that make me feel comfortable doing more marketing for them. I think I ought to set aside some time to define that more precisely.
Senpai: Good…
Kohai: That’s not all. I also do consulting work. I get about $10-$15 for each ebook sale, while I get $500 per consult. I could theoretically do almost one every other day, maybe even one per day, if I line up the clients nicely. To do that I would have to solicit for more clients. I would like to update my marketing blog before I solicit for more clients. This does not feel as daunting of a task as updating the ebooks. But as I say these things I realize… I feel conflicted about this. Client work requires me to set aside my own troubles and issues to really see and hold space for my clients. Like you are doing for me now. And I think it’s difficult for me to be a good consultant if I’m not at ease. I believe that a good consultant functions like an intelligent mirror, and it’s hard for me to be a good mirror if I’m all scuffed up. I have to clean the mirror first. Or if we use the surface of water as an analogy, I need to still the water before I can be a good reflector.
Senpai: So what will you do?
Kohai: There’s more still. Aside from the ebooks and the consults, I’ve also been meaning to write some essays. This has been my primary intent in life ever since I shipped my second book. And this is the thing I am most knotted about. I find it hard to do consults, or work on my ebooks, if I haven’t made any progress on my essays. I even find it hard to rest, or have fun, if I haven’t made any progress on my essays. This is the main thing that I’ve been agonizing about. I know it’s not helpful to agonize. I know that there are all these secondary things, like… I could question any of my assumptions along the way. Do I really need to make more money to feel financially secure? Do I really need to be proud of my ebooks before I can sell them? Do I really need to “clean the mirror” before I can do more client work? But honestly, as I say these things, I find that the answers are yes.
Senpai: I believe you. You’ve thought a lot about this.
Kohai: Yes, thank you so much for seeing that. I agonize about agonizing even as I know that it’s unhelpful.
Senpai: You have my permission to agonize freely.
Kohai: I have an essay I could write titled “greatness is deviance”. It would be good. But I don’t really want to do it right after writing “Are you serious?” Oh. It could be a blogpost i suppose. I’m writing it right now. Done.