Nothing in life is wasted.
Nothing that you have done so far in your life is wasted.
It’s important that you don’t forget that.
Many years ago, from 2002-2006, I ran a website called WritersCrossing. Like The International Freelancer, it was an intersection between writing, freelancing, international living, and finding independence in your life and work. Then I found that I loved journalism and did a whole lot of that. I wrote books. I finished a novel. I introduced content marketing into the mix, learned a lot about social media. I started The International Freelancer.
I love all these disjoint, disconnected parts of my writing life. Whatever I don’t enjoy, I put on the backburner for a while, to revisit when the passion returns again. (It almost always does.)
But because I do that, it’s also easy for me to fall into the trap of thinking that the effort I’m putting into all these different parts of my career doesn’t matter.
A few months ago, I faced exactly that.
I looked back over the years at the time I’d spent on WritersCrossing, the failed books, the novel that I have yet to revise, and all the hours I’d spent on these efforts with nothing to show for them. I have to admit to drinking a lot of wine that night because the days when you feel like you have nothing to show for years of effort are, for a writer, the darkest of all.
I wondered if I needed to start being more tactical about the way I approached my career, about whether I needed to find more focus and clarity, whether I needed to stop listening to the writer in me and pay more attention to the businessperson. Did I need a strategy?
Steve Jobs once said, “You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.”
Three weeks after my cuddling session with the wine bottle, a couple of amazing, but completely random things happened.
I was offered a very high-paying contract that came about because of my experience with content marketing and because I’d been building websites (from scratch) since 2002. Don’t forget, the only reason I was ever able to get high-paying $400 an hour content marketing work right off the bat is because of my extensive journalism experience, especially in the developing world.
Then, I got offered another gig, also because of my website building days. But they also wanted two other things that they hadn’t been able to find in other writers they’d considered: Knowledge of international markets and experience teaching online courses.
Sitting here today, it’s easy to see how everything’s come together. I can look back and join the dots. The website led me to journalism, which in turn led me to content marketing and The International Freelancer, which in turn led me to speaking gigs and online trainings.
I can even add a few dots further. I’ve just finished a six-week contract that involved learning a lot about social media and data auditing, and not only am I already negotiating more blogging work as a direct result of that, but when I am finally ready to launch my books or sell my novel, I now have enough social media knowledge to be able to come up with a good long-term sales strategy. I have enough comfort with data analysis to be able to analyze the results of my content and promotions.
I would never have thought that writing content for a financial firm would be the reason that a huge foundation that does great work in the world would discover my writing and ask that I run their newsroom, but that’s exactly what has happened.
I’m reminded of a story Jack Canfield tells about when he was a high school teacher. He says that while he loved teaching, he wanted a bigger space in which to do it. So he started speaking, telling stories. The intersection of that teaching and that storytelling is what led him to the Chicken Soup for the Soul series of books, now a publishing powerhouse.
We’re all the same. It’s very difficult to see how that soul-sucking job you’re working at right now is going to help you in the side business you’re setting up but you’re picking up essential skills every day that you don’t know, can’t possibly know, will come in handy when you least expect it.
So take pride in what you’re doing, do it well, even when you don’t think there’s any chance that you’ll ever use these skills again. You might, in ways that you never would have imagined. It will all come together. Nothing you have done or are doing will ever be in vain.
Success happens at the intersection, when you’re too busy to see or notice what’s happening. Keep doing the work you’re doing.
One day it will count.