Day 5: What word, said or unsaid, has or could change your life? How?
“Reconsider.”
Some of the runners-up were: “options”, “possible”, “can”, “begin”, “don’t”.
When I was a young woman starting my life in the late ’80’s, I knew I wanted to be a writer, and didn’t really know what else I wanted to or could be, but people kept telling me I couldn’t make a living at it.
So I wish someone had shown me more options available to me (and that some of the options now available because of the internet had existed then), that they had shown me what was possible, that they had said “you ‘can’ do it. You can be yourself, do what you’re meant to do, and find a way to make it work.”
Now I would like to hear the word “begin” from a potential writing client. When can you begin? Let’s begin this collaboration.
And going back to the past, before I arrived at the word “reconsider”, I thought of “don’t.” There are times in my life when I wish that someone, along with showing me what was possible, would have said “don’t do it” when I was about to make a mistake mostly because I didn’t know what else I could do.
But then no one, and certainly no artist or young person, wants to be told what to do or not to do. What they could have said instead is “I suggest you ‘reconsider’ this. You might regret this decision, here are the reasons why, and here are the alternatives that might work better for you.”
So my word is “reconsider.”
What am I reconsidering now, three decades later? My lifelong unconscious beliefs that writing and business don’t mix; that I won’t ever be able to make a living doing one of the few things I’m good at; that I just don’t have what it takes, such as ability, know-how, energy, courage, competence or confidence.