How to show up (even when you don’t feel like it)
💡 This blog post is adapted from my Playing Favorites newsletter.
Our industry is pretty darn obsessed with the future of things -- technologies, channels, trends, professions. And I get it. I tend to live in the future in my life, too. It’s bad. I mean, it’s not always bad -- sometimes, visualizing what you’re trying to do or what the project will look like and feel like can be helpful. But mostly, my mind spends too much time wandering and wondering what the future holds for me, for my business, for this community, for society, for the planet … instead of, yanno, doing something about it.
This week was yet another week that felt like a year. (Enter all kinds of thoughts and concerns about the future.)
As I write these words on Wednesday, my father is unconscious, undergoing open heart surgery. We didn’t see it coming.
Also as I write these words, a mob of domestic terrorists has forced their way into the capitol building of the United States. We totally saw it coming.
So, here I am, writing to you while my mind drifts further and further out. Actually, “drifts” is the wrong word. This feels more like getting heaved every which way, like my psyche is an 18th century ship on the Atlantic, tossed between hopeful and hopeless and back again. And right in the middle of this storm, I realize (and doesn’t this always happen?): I have to do my work despite this.
What caused the storm may be different for you, but you’ve likely dealt with something similar. As our minds churn about, we have to show up and ship something. That’s what we chose. That’s what we signed up for. We’re here to deliver -- on deadlines, budgets, promises, and premises.
We’re here to make things that make a difference -- for our careers, for our companies, and for our communities. As Seth Godin has said, being a professional means doing the work even when you don’t feel like it. (My dad’s surgeon certainly saw the news in DC. He doesn’t get to sit this today out. He doesn’t get to be worse at his job, either. He is a professional. So am I. So are you.)
We don’t get to create the work only when the seas are calm. I mean, if you look hard enough at the world, or concern yourself with the future often enough, “calm” becomes a laughable idea. It was for me today.
But then I stepped outside.
With all of that stuff in my head -- my dad, the country, the planet, the work … all of it -- I went for a walk around the block with my dog. It’s a quiet and cloudy day here in Cambridge, just outside Boston, and as I rounded the corner, I reflexively stopped short on the concrete, pulling Nocci back towards me.
A woman was approaching, and so my quarantined brain engaged in evasive maneuvers. Time to do the COVID shuffle, as it were -- one of my go-to moves as a city dweller to keep a safe distance. I stepped back around the corner without missing a beat, preparing to smile at my neighbor (with my eyes, because mouths are so 2019).
She didn’t even notice me. She just kept right on going.
I’ve noticed her before. I see her maybe twice a week. She’s older, and she walks slightly hunched. She’s short but seems impossibly tiny thanks to the massive, faded blue coat that swallows her whole. She wears a black knit cap and a giant mask covering the entire bottom half of her face. Her metal cane makes a consistent clack … clack … clack on the concrete.
I let her pass and turned the corner again. Once more, I saw a neighbor, this time a taller fella some 100 feet down the street. The sidewalk is too narrow to leave space, and the street too busy to cross, so I turned back around to instead follow that giant blue jacket I’d just let pass.
“Wait,” I thought. “How is she THERE?”
She should have been much farther down the sidewalk by that point, but there she was, barely a few slabs of concrete away from me. Had she stopped to adjust her mask? Tripped over the jacket I can only assume she purchased from a Boston Celtics power forward?
Nope. She was just plodding along at her own pace. Her body bounced and swayed, arms swinging at her sides. I was struck by the youthful energy of it. Her upper half moved like mine does while I walk Nocci. Her lower half… didn’t match that pep. Her steps felt more her speed, as slowly, surely, she moved not that far along.
Clack … clack … clack.
Now, had the universe decided to hand me this moment on a silver platter, that woman would have been very far down the sidewalk instead. Of course! I would think (and subsequently write to you, ever the opportunist). You can get pretty far just by taking lots of tiny steps.
But she wasn’t far. Not at all.
So what’s the lesson? Let’s try this…
I think the trick is to take that next step with as much confidence and energy as she did -- no matter how far you go. Because that’s all you can actually do.
You can’t go very far with a single step. Life is lived one day at a time. You can’t change things all at once. You can’t fast-forward. You can’t go further than one moment at a time. We are all trapped inside today, even though we wish we could stretch our legs into tomorrow -- following our minds as they wander there.
But. We. Can’t.
No matter how grand your ambitions, how badly you want to move past something, or how righteous you feel in trying to change things -- all you get is that next, tiny step. As much as we think about the future, all we get is one day.
Take your step
Despite the storms raging around you, or in you. You might feel inspired again. Or, you might inspire someone else.
So you may as well take that tiny step with your arms swinging as enthusiastically as my neighbor’s, knowing full well it’s just a tiny move forward and nothing at all feels different just yet.
Take your step … despite the storms raging around you, or in you.
* * *
Sitting here right now, the last thing I feel is confident. I don’t feel like swinging my arms. I feel like covering my head. But I’m taking this step. I’m acting confident. Honestly? I’m faking it. I’m writing this to you, sure, but I don’t feel like it. Maybe you liked this entry, maybe not, but there I go. Stepping. Not because conditions are right, but precisely because they aren’t.
That’s what I signed up to do. That’s what any professional signs up to do.
Today, I swung my arms and imagined I meant it. And yanno what? I kinda feel better. All these sentences later, I’ve moved forward. Instead of a cane, I heard my keys.
Clack … clack … clack.
Sometimes, we can’t see the future coming. (The signs weren’t there for my dad.) Other times, we very much can. (Slowly closes tabs containing 15 news articles.)
My friend, I’m not sure if this is the right thing to do in any absolute sense (does that ever exist anyway?), but maybe, just maybe, you and I should stop wasting time worrying about the future altogether … and simply get to stepping.
The length of your stride doesn’t matter. It can only extend the length of a day, anyway. That’s as far as anyone can go. So we persist, not because of how we feel but despite it.
Keep swinging your arms. Keep clacking along. You might feel inspired again, and you might inspire others. Because you never know who might be watching. Maybe someone who really needs to find their stride again, as they stand on the corner, gripping a leather leash on a gray sky day.
As I mentioned… this blog is adapted from my Playing Favorites newsletter.
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