One Good Thing

thoughts on managing your work life

This is an essay for anyone who is a surprise, and maybe even reluctant, entrepreneur, and who finds themselves scratching their head about how the heck they got there. I figured something out that I believe will profoundly help you. If you read this and catch yourself nodding, then where I land at the end might be the greatest solution to running your, likely overwhelming, entrepreneurial life…that likely, feels like its running you.

I never meant to run my own business. I’ve spent my adult life studying the craft of writing, both fiction and creative non-fiction. And while I’m always writing and trying to publish books, I also have a business teaching writing on many levels and with many branches. They are all surprise branches. Even the trunk was a surprise. Not the roots though. Those have been there from the start. I just thought they’d grow books only. So I’ve learned on the job, literally. I don’t even like calling myself an entrepreneur. I’ve been called one a lot, and it always gives me an inner-cringe. I’ve never even taken an economics class. I’m horrible with spreadsheets. I have major blocks when it comes to numbers, instantly reverting to the fourth grade me, crying over a word problem. Why do I need to know what time it will be if two trains leave opposite stations…etc.? Makes my blood pressure rise just writing that sentence, never mind trying to wrap my brain around it.

I’m self-taught in pretty much all aspects of my life, and stubbornly so, especially when it comes to all of my business “silos,” as I recently heard them called. I come from farm people, so that sort of made sense to me, but I’d rather think of my business like a tree with leafing branches and roots, bending in the wind. I don’t like rigidity and silos aren’t built to bend at all. I’m allergic to the idea of a business plan, I’m not spread-sheet-savvy, nor am I wisely strategic. In fact, I’ve never been one to look into the future at all. I don’t even have the foggiest idea of what year it will be if I live to be ninety, and please don’t tell me.

But I am very, very committed to using what I’ve learned in my life to help people, especially in the way of finding their unique self-expression using the written word, and so it makes sense that those roots became this leafing: teaching and editing people’s writing at all levels and in all genres, short and long form. I love it. But twelve years in, I have been taking a serious look at what I’ve created and working hard to learn how to manage it all healthily, not harried-ly. (And I really loathe adverbs so it felt right to mess with them a bit. Because where I’m going with this essay, has to do with getting playful, and yes, messing a bit with how your mind has habituated itself around your work life. Wouldn’t it be nice if work actually worked?)

So instead of resisting what your life has become, you might as well take a look around and feel the wind in your hair. Step into your rooting. Look at how you got here so that you can see what’s working and what isn’t.

I have always been deeply curious about people and the stuff they do to one another. The way they feel and why. How to feel what there is to feel but not carry it around on your back like a boulder you’re so used to that you have accommodated it with a Baby Bjorn boulder holder. And without even knowing it. See, I’m not even that funny. I run serious and sometimes sad, and always way too sensitive for most people’s liking, including my own. In other words, I’ll always tell you how I really am in the grocery store, even though you’d probably rather I didn’t.

This makes me bad in most groups, because I hate fitting into slots, resist group-think, and like to stir the pot in the way of curiosity and out-of-the-box thinking. I don’t mean to be this way. Or maybe I do. It’s not pre-meditated, put it that way. It’s just how I fly and always have. I never have been in a clearly defined social group. Not for long anyway. I’m more of a one-on-one type of person. And when I am your friend, I am loyal. I have a high tolerance for human behavior and a strong ability to see where it comes from it, especially when it’s “bad behavior.” I don’t believe in bad babies. But I do believe that bad behavior is usually fear-based, and that’s usually forgivable. Usually. In other words, you have to hurt me real bad for me to let you go.

I suppose I’ve made life harder on myself by not being a joiner. I’m good at leading groups, however. I’m good at creating meaningful reasons for gatherings. My mind is constantly thinking, What can I create? What makes that person tick? How are we similar instead of different? Especially when we seem so very different on the outside. That’s my favorite. I value empathy more than just about anything else. And wonder. If you’re an entrepreneur, you are by nature full of wonder. And that can sometimes get us into trouble, both in our personal lives, and in our business lives.

I once overheard my, then, twelve year old daughter tell my, then, eight year old son, “I know she’s hard to deal with sometimes, but she’s the only mother we have. And she means well.” I wanted to rip my mothering into shreds and start all over again, but I wasn’t surprised. I knew what she meant. I ask a lot of questions, and not like, “do you want a turkey or ham sandwich for lunch today?” More like, “Why do you think the sky is blue?” You know…the questions that little kids ask their parents. I have a lot that are unanswered and maybe I like it that way. I love wondering. And when my kids were little, I was on a mission to preserve their wonder instead of steal it like so much of our traditional society does by putting our children into slots. “You’re artsy. You belong in this room with these people. Not in that room with those other people.” “You’re a jock. You belong on this field with these people. Not on that field with those people.” Splitting us. Fracturing us. I hated it as a kid and I hated it as a mother.

My son spun it a bit differently. He was in fifth grade and we were driving the five miles to school in our truck. That precious time when you have your kids strapped into a seat. That golden half hour of maternal soul searching and connection with your children when no one is running in another direction. He said, “I get it now. You don’t let us take the bus because you want to ask us questions and get us to talk.” He didn’t seem upset about it. So I said, “It’s just that you both have so much to say, and I love hearing it.”

When we weren’t in conversation, we made up word games that were more like high dives into their psyches, wants, fears, loves. I never once heard them say that they were bored. When they got older and I’d drive their friends around, sometimes for hours on end to baseball or soccer games, their friends would complain about being bored. My son once told his friend, “Only boring people get bored. Look out the car window.” In other words, “Practice your wonder.”

When cell phones came along, I was that mother who stalled it out, diverting them with “Let’s go outside and play” or “I’ll teach you how to make my Bolognese sauce” or “Shall we see if the robins eggs have hatched?” It didn’t make me the popular mom back then. Oh well. They’re in their twenties now and both of them are excellent at slot-shifting, asking questions, listening to people answer them, and truly caring. Their wonder is intact. Mission accomplished.

All this to say that anyone who manages a many-branched, multi-leafed business feels like the very thing that brought them into it, their wonder, creativity, passion, perseverance, flexibility, playfulness…is being stolen by any number of things that don’t seem to have any wonder in them at all. Each beautiful leaf seems to have its own version of blight. That stack of bills seems to have an axe in its hand, ready to start hacking away at the trunk. Shoot poison into the roots.

This was how I spent my morning feeling, as I stared at my bills. One for a trademark that’s about to expire. One for a wifi network that doesn’t even work half the time. Another from the IRS. One from the SBA. Four more for the people who help keep my business strong in tech, social media, graphic design and website support. All help that I’m grateful to pay for, but still…it all adds up. I felt like I was the child strapped into the seatbelt, only the woman at the steerage didn’t care about my wonder. She was throwing screens at me and asking me to stare at them all day long, and no matter what…do not look out the “window.” And without looking out the window…there’s no leafing, no branches, no trunk, and definitely not roots. It all falls over and turns to rot. And I realized that even though I was in the comfort of my own home, my heart was racing, I felt extreme intestinal distress, and a little short of breath. I knew what it was: the very thing I’d been warned about by pioneers in my field. If you don’t take care of yourself, you will start building resentment. And once that happens, it’s over.

So instead of ignoring this feeling, and hammering away at that unending stack of bills, and business emails that need to be answered…for once...I stopped. I heard my thirty year old mothering voice say, “Let’s go outside and play. The sky isn’t going to fall if you take a break.”

I resisted. “I can’t go outside and play. I need to get through all of this busy work in order to play at the end of the day, when I can reward myself with something fun. Something that I love. If I take a break to play, then it’ll be dark by the time I’m done.”

She was not having it. “Really? You can’t take a five minute break to do something you love right now? Seriously? Because that’s just plain untrue. You have five minutes right now. What’s one thing that you’d really like to do that will take you as long as it takes to pay a bill? Say, five minutes.”

And I thought about it. “Well, actually, I’d really like to explore the Mendoza area of Argentina for a potential writing retreat there next year. My friend gave me a list of retreat centers there. One of them has horseback riding. I’d love to spend five minutes checking out their horse facility. And while I’m thinking about it, I’m sort of hungry. And my daughter brought over some delicious Flathead cherries yesterday, fresh off her friend’s cherry tree. That could be another five minutes.”

Mothering voice: “Just pick one. You always do this. You try to leaf too much. Eenie meenie. One five minute moment of wonder, just for you.”

I chose the cherries.

Then I went back to my desk and I chose just one bill.

Then I chose the horse facility.

Then another bill.

Then it got fun. Mother of the Bride dresses for my daughter’s upcoming wedding.

Another bill.

Then it started to feel like whiplash. So I asked my wonder. Maybe that’s what that mothering voice really was all along. She answered: “Good start. Now try this: write down three things that would bring you delight in the next three hours. Now put your To-Do list into categories. Choose a category. If one of them requires more than an hour, divide it into categories, each one about an hour work-load. Now work on a one hour category until it’s finished. Now it’s wonder time! Take your five minute break. Or maybe it’s more than five minutes. But make sure it’s something that truly brings you joy. Now back for the next category.”

I cannot believe that I have been living like this, and for over a decade: all the “good” stuff at the very beginning and end of each day, as if I’m being punished. And then all the stuff that wears on me all day, and truthfully, sometimes into the night, with no time for the “good stuff” at all. When you’re an entrepreneur, you can always create more stuff to do. Some of it is wonderous, and a lot of it isn’t. What if I laced the stuff I love to do throughout the day in tiny moments of delight? I suspect that the “bad” stuff wouldn’t be so bad, after all. Because it’s not bad. I have just trained myself into thinking that it is. Depriving me of my wonder like an enemy of it. It’s just not true. I’m the one depriving myself of my wonder.

It’s been a beautiful day today, and I anticipate another one tomorrow if I start truly adhering to this practice. Really paying attention to what kicks in my wonder and what doesn’t. And yes, I know that a person can learn how to find wonder in bill paying. I’m not there yet. For now, I’m going to practice this and see if I feel relief. That’s what I want to feel. Relief. One good thing. One tiny good thing.

And right now, I do feel relief. My one good thing was writing this essay. Now back to the pile of bills. Maybe one day soon they won’t seem so “bad.”

And if there’s one thing that I’ve created and love so much that sometimes it hurts…it’s leading my Haven Writing Retreats. To learn more, go here. There’s still room on all three of my fall 2026 retreats in Montana!

Isn’t it time to finally move your pen and find the language of your heart? Let’s get on the phone and dig into these good questions.

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