Operation Achieve Anything: Day Three-Hundred-Fifty-Four, Dateline 12-20-2018
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“Life is a lottery that we’ve already won. But people have not cashed in their tickets.”
Good afternoon crickets. Welcome to day number three-hundred-fifty-four of Operation Achieve Anything. Over the past couple of days, I’ve been focused on the fact that at some point over the weekend, it felt like a flip was switched, and I’m starting to feel like a, somewhat, content person for the first time in my entire life. Up until whatever this recent change started to set in, I was always more focused on the hopes of where my efforts would lead me, all the while, ignoring the accomplishments that I’ve made as a borderline illiterate who’s dedicated his life to teaching himself how to write.
Yes, I did go to film school for writing after earning a scholarship, but by that time, I had already been at it for ten years, had over a dozen feature-length script, and even had a literary agent for a project that fell through the cracks. I loved the experience and learned a few tricks, but for the most part, it just solidified everything that I already knew, one of those things being that I didn’t want to write my tales to entirely focus on format and structure. I prefer to write with a start and end point and a collection of characters. I then hang out with these characters in my head for a while as I get to know what makes them interesting, then fire the starter pistol and just document how thing play out as the characters find their own way to the finish line.
Some characters will make it to the correct places within just one story while others are always up for more. Sometimes I feel like, in real life, I’m just a secondary character, who’s not dying to be the star but does think that he’s interesting enough to deserve a least a little attention. I was always just too fearful to try to become professional since I felt that everyone saw my rebellious ways to be cute but also a total joke. Every piece of feedback always claimed to love the originality of my work but then would dismiss me for being too lazy since I didn’t catch every typo, and/or failed to fulfill the format’s need to be marketable to the mainstream.
I’ve been told so many times that my work is well done and very creative but are unmarketable at the same time. This is probably why I’ve built up such a wall against the marketing and business side of my writing venture. I always feared that I would have to change my ways to make it, which would be true if I were in it for the money, but I’ve always been more interested in exploring my ideas until I was good enough at painting with language to properly articulate how I see my stories play out in my head. Everyone kept telling me that I couldn’t do this because it goes against the traditional approach to become a paid scribe.
The closer and closer this site grows to being profitable on my own terms, the more an more my creative side is able to let loose and let the same anti-traditional aspect of me that is interested in experimenting with business ideas with the same expectations to share my trials and errors as I attempt to figure it out. I feel like just the idea that there is a way to get this tiny bit of income to grow without having to: take meetings, sell myself to individuals who will never be on the same page, or need a safety net, has lifted my spirits in a significant way. I know for sure that by this time next year, I will be earning at least as much as I was making while working my part-time job.
Though I hated the actual job, the payment was perfect for my current situation, so, if I were getting the same pay while loving my work, that would be enough for me to live out the rest of my life an extremely pleased individual. I’m starting to see that my dominate creative side was suffocating the side of me that was required to get my work out to the world. Whether or not I’m actually ready is still up for debate, but at least now, I feel like I’m the one who has control over the argument. No more faking it until I make it because I am already there, but it’s an uncharted destination that will continue to take time to explore.
This actually plays into yesterday’s assignment where I was supposed to, get into the practice of being more critical of my to-do list by focusing more on abundance and not just enough to get you through the day. My creative side finally feels secure that, no matter what, it will always have the final say while my professional side up to explore the business/marketing world. I’m hoping that the prolific ambitions that I have toward my writing will carry over in the ways that I promote my work and this will lead to the abundance that the Achieve Anything... book speaks of.
With that, it’s now time to introduce the assignment for today where I’m now just supposed to look at life itself as a lottery game that I’ve already won, just by being here. We’ll see how I handle this task when I check in again tomorrow. Until then, it’s that time again for me to sign off as usual by saying, good day and good luck to you and all of your projects.
Talk to you soon.
Sincerely,
The Wicker Breaker
P.S. Below are links to my novel, which I plan to promote as part of Operation Achieve Anything, as well as a link to where you can buy the book that is providing the structure to this project in case you would like to purchase it in order to play along.
