You Accidentally Stumble on the Writing You Love
On the path to uncovering the things you love and finding your flow…
🤩 You discover the kind of writing that lights you up.
🤗 You can’t wait to do more of it.
🧐 There’s just one problem: your plate is already overflowing with other things that don’t feel as energizing.
You might want to sit and only do the work that excites you all day long and ignore the rest. I’m also guessing that the “rest” is your bread (gluten-free) and butter (plant-based).
I get it because I’ve navigated this road a handful of times.
Here’s what NOT to do: Resent the work, rush through, and hurry to the shit you want to do.
A writing community member and I had a good chat about this last week. Her primary revenue source is writing — and a pretty tedious aspect of writing. It's not the free, creative work she’s craving most these days.
I've been in this situation many times, and it's important to make sure to keep my energy clear and vibration high even when I'm doing things that aren't necessarily my favorite.
This first came up for me when I was in my corporate career. There were lots of things I didn't love doing there, but like a good employee, you pull up your Spanx and do them. I also found value in doing a variety of things to be able to see what I loved and preferred for someone else to do. If you can come to see every task as an opportunity to show you what you’re good at and what you prefer someone else to do, it changes the whole feeling.
In 2015, I discovered what I DID want to do — writing. That became the ONLY thing I wanted to do. And I wasn’t in the position to drop my two weeks’ notice and peace out of there… yet.
It was around this time that I decided to start growing my freelance copywriting business on the side while maintaining my full-time consulting job. There were many mornings when I wanted to resent it. The commute, the cubicles, the boring meetings, all the talking!
I stopped myself.
It hit me.
That the energy I put into my corporate job represented how I did anything — and that negative energy would spill over into my freelance writing business — that I wanted to grow.
⚡️ Energy is EVERYTHING ⚡️
The energy I bring to one client needs to be the same as every client. The energy I bring paying bills and taxes needs to be the same as the energy I bring when I share my books with the world.
Here are some swaps I made in 2015 to embody the high-vibing successful freelance writer me:
Waking up early to commute — pretend I was getting ready to work from my home office, really FEELing what it feels like to run my business from home, be in complete control of my schedule, and write for people. Even if I was shimmying into a pencil skirt, I’d imagine I was slipping into my writing pants and work-at-home messy bun.
Commuting — start listening to audiobooks on mindset, writing, entrepreneurship, and mastery to make the most of every second. If I took the train, I’d use this time to read books, work on my business, write website copy, or even do client work once I started landing some.
Meetings & all the talking — use every interaction with every human as practice for engaging and communicating with the people I'd work with within my freelance business
I switched my focus to gratitude while doing the work that wasn’t my favorite.
Here I was, getting paid to learn the skills I'll use in my business — leading meetings, directing teams, communicating, planning projects, presenting, proposal writing, and email writing.
Now, if your bridge job affords you the opportunity to refine the skills you'll use in your business, then that's amazing. Use every chance to improve yourself. If your current job doesn’t offer these opportunities — look closely. There might be some of those transferable skills there.
Today, roughly 95% of the work I do is what I love. I grew into this by design. Still, a passion project will tug at my attention when I have other work and writing-related commitments.
After focusing on and finishing my first book, Unfussy Life, and later, Intuitive Writing, I knew I needed to dedicate more of my time to writing for myself — my books, blogs, and social media.
As a freelance copywriter, I do a lot of writing for others. Most of it — like 99% of it, I love. Sometimes, I say yes to a lot of projects — what can I say? I love being of service, which often leaves little time for my writing projects until I started putting my writing first.
I notice when this happens because I might start resenting some of the work — which is NOT the energy I promised to bring to my clients. I mean, they don't necessarily know that when they sign our agreement to work together, they're also signing up to get high vibes on their writing projects, but that's what's congruent to me to offer.
When this happens, I make sure I'm in a high-vibration, gratitude-filled place.
Here's how:
For everything I write — whether for me or clients:
Take a moment to get present and grounded. This can be just a few deep breaths, feeling my but on the chair and feet on the floor (or really, cross-legged on my chair)
Setting an intention — for my best work to come through and that whatever words I include, let it be of the highest quality and highest good for whoever needs to read it
Keeping my energy clear and high every day. Some days, this requires more attention than others. It means writing morning pages, meditating with my coffee (iykyk), easing into my morning, clearing the air at my desk with some sage or palo santo, getting sun, eating more raw, whole foods (even though I eat plant-based, sometimes too many processed foods can sneak in).
If you notice this theme of staring down tasks you don’t want to do comes up repeatedly, there might be more to look at.
Are you saying yes when you mean no?
Can you say no? (I practiced this in 2015 when I was getting ready to leave my job)
Can you enforce better boundaries?
Can you extend a timeline to give yourself more space to find your flow?
Can you time block your days or weeks to manage your energy for the different kinds of work you do?
Will we all be able to fill every second of every day with things that bring us joy? Not completely but I’m hopeful we can get close. I think we also just need to get better at waiting.
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