‘Doing me’
I talk to my old pastor on occasion. I’ve pretty much stopped going to church these days, so I get some grief about that. 😉 But I’m taking my liberties when it comes to taking her advice on taking time to “do me.”
It’s been NUTS at Chez Caterwauling these past few days. I’m loving it, of course. I can forget about all the external drama and really channel my creativity into a huge project we’re launching on Sunday. God, I feel alive again.
I’ve been working since 6:30 a.m., after stopping somewhere around 1 a.m. last night. But it’s fun. It really is. I just got my paycheck in the mail and had to stop myself from thanking my boss for the opportunity to be a part of this wonderful odyssey.
As it should be, friends. Mark my words.
I just jumped off a two-hour call (after an hour-long call before it), and both are with old, old friends.
My latest caller stopped me in mid-sentence over something — I literally had the million-dollar idea and presented it almost apologetically. WTF?
He said, “Wow, did that series of fuckheads in Florida do a number on you!”
Knowing me very well, he said he can tell I’ve lost my way. I went from busting his balls two years ago to meekly suggesting that perhaps we can maybe, I dunno, think about incorporating this idea.
I got the pep talk of a lifetime. That I have always had the talent and skills. That I’ve clearly multiplied them since we last worked together. But that my management style has changed so very dramatically.
Hmm.
He’s right. I foundered greatly at Graceland/Den of Iniquity. You can’t reason with crazy. So, I didn’t. I hid in my corner and managed the most-difficult person possible. But we made it work — I busted his chops right back, and I am literally the only person he respects in our entire industry. So, yay.
But then, my friend said I must have inherited a lot of dead weight at the next job. I said I did, to some degree. But I was so sick of watching those kids get beaten down that I made it my mission to build them up … with the intent of THEN figuring out who should stay or go.
For the most part, people did raise their game. They didn’t realize that they COULD, nor that this initiative wasn’t punishable by death after all. Who knew?
But he assessed me pretty right. He said he could tell I was raising m own game all along — I just didn’t really let on to anyone how much I did, how much I knew and, worst of all, how much more I was capable of.
I guess while I was giving my people a voice, I muffled my own.
But, that’s not a bad thing, right? My new boss and colleagues shower me with compliments and I ask them to stop. Because I don’t feel like I’m doing anything extraordinary. My job is to come up with million-dollar ideas — why the hell are you people throwing me a parade when I do?
And that last sentence points toward untold amounts of dysfunction.
I had a huge victory yesterday. A marketing campaign I’m working on got 1,000 click-throughs within the first couple hours of being live … and then an 86% conversion rate.
That is HUGE.
Considering that we had budgeted for 150 click-throughs and maybe 80 conversions, let me say it again, THAT IS HUGE.
I was thinking about the freelance job that I quit, how I produced well-researched, creative and ready-to-publish deliverables. And the stupid bitch of a marketing consultant who was hired AFTER I signed on as a copywriter said that I suck, pure and simple.
Meanwhile, I’m destroying all the crap OUR copywriter turns in and I’m turning into a fucking money-making machine.
Proving once and for all that if you people had just left me the fuck alone, I would have doubled the profitability of the last three businesses that I no longer work for.
The thing is, my fate rides on this. My contract is done in four weeks. God bless these people for paying my retainer up front. But if this thing flops, I don’t know how to pay rent in June.
Now, realistically, it’s all going to work out wonderfully and I’ll be able to breathe. One thing that is nice is that I’ll be paid on the merits of my own work, and not — as some people seemed to believe — because I was at their mercy.
Oh, I remember what made my friend mad. When I came up with my second million-dollar idea in one conversation, I joked that, whew, thank God I was able to prove I was paying attention. WOW did that set him off!
He said that I need to reframe the past two years of my life. That those companies driving me out was GREAT for my identity. That I spent half my day trying to figure out how NOT to get yelled at was a waste of all the abilities lying dormant.
Perhaps I will start sending out those thank-you cards after all!
Well, back to “work,” if you can call it that. (And I really don’t.) I have another million to make today — and I’ve got another rabbit waiting to jump out of my hat. …