"Sometimes it is simply the distance between identity and manifestation. " 

Sometimes I go somewhere else while standing in my kitchen.

I pour coffee into a favorite mug I've had for years, except in the version I see, I'm standing in a very different kitchen. It is spacious and beautiful. The house is mine. My work paid for it.

I take my coffee outside and write on the patio beside the pool. I can hear water moving through a fountain somewhere in the landscaped garden. Gardenias are blooming. The air smells clean and alive.

And I am grateful.

To God.

And to myself for doing the work.

What strikes me most about the scene is that I am still doing the same thing I do now.

I am writing.

The surroundings changed. The woman didn't disappear.

Then I opened my eyes.

The first thing I saw was my grandson's little hanger holding his bath towel from the windowsill. Beyond it were the familiar white concrete walls around me, walls that have been painted and repainted over the years.

For a moment, I just looked around.

The kitchen I had imagined felt so real. The gardenias, the fountain, my coffee, the patio, the home my work had financed. Then there was the room I was actually standing in.

What I felt was hope, but hope was doing some heavy lifting that morning.

It was the thing energizing me toward the next action.

So I got up and continued.

I wrote. I built. I worked on the systems, the websites, the publications and the ideas that belong to the life I had just seen so clearly.

Maybe that's what hope is supposed to do. It isn't there merely to make the future feel good when I imagine it.

It gives me enough of that future to move today.

The Identity Can Arrive First

I think we expect change to happen in an orderly sequence.

First the circumstances change. Then we believe differently.

First the money changes. Then we feel successful.

First the opportunity appears. Then we become confident.

First someone recognizes the work. Then we decide it has value.

But I don't think it always happens that way.

Sometimes you become her first.

Your thinking changes. Your standards change. Your relationship with yourself changes. You begin making different decisions before there is enough visible evidence for anybody else to understand what you're doing.

That can be a strange place to occupy because the old surroundings are still recognizable.

You are not.

The temptation is to use the surroundings as evidence of who you are.

I'm learning to be very careful about that.

A circumstance can tell me where I am standing without being qualified to tell me who I am.

Those are two very different pieces of information.

Take the Meat

My father used to say, take the meat and leave the bones.

I've started thinking about that as an operating principle.

The meat is what contains usable information.

I am writing every day. I am building.

The business operating system exists. The articles exist. The publications exist. My thinking is becoming clearer, and I'm getting better at translating what I see into something another person can encounter, understand and use.

That's meat.

Now I can look at what comes next: circulation, visibility, distribution and conversion.

Those are things I can work on. I can publish consistently. I can create stronger pathways into the work. I can study what connects, adjust what needs adjusting and continue building.

The work gives me information, and information gives me a next move.

That's what I need.

Leave the Bones

The bones are different.

I should be further ahead.

Bone.

Maybe I've wasted my time.

Bone.

Everyone else has already figured this out.

Bone.

Those thoughts may feel urgent, but urgency doesn't make them useful.

I've learned that insecurity can disguise itself as strategy. It can convince me that reconsidering everything is somehow productive when what I actually need is the next move.

So now I ask a different question.

What is this circumstance actually telling me that I can use?

That question changes things.

It turns my attention away from judgment and toward information. Information can lead to a decision. A decision can produce an action. An action gives me something new to evaluate.

That's movement.

The rest can stay on the plate.

Recognition and Value Are Not Synchronized

Recently I saw a brief piece about Vincent van Gogh and found myself thinking about the strange relationship between creation and recognition.

History contains people whose work was dismissed, ignored or poorly compensated while they were alive, only to become extraordinarily valuable later.

I don't romanticize that.

I don't want to become some misunderstood creator whom everyone recognizes after she's gone.

There is no prize in being unseen.

But there is something useful in recognizing that public recognition and actual value do not always arrive simultaneously.

The work can exist before the audience understands it.

The idea can be good before distribution is good.

The product can be complete before its market has encountered it enough times.

The creator's responsibility, then, is not merely to create.

She also has to build the pathway through which the work can be found, understood, purchased and used.

That is part of the work.

Fix the Machine

Something else happened in my thinking that showed me how much I've changed.

I thought about money.

Not abstract wealth. A number.

$15,000.

For perhaps the first time, my mind immediately translated that number into units of what I sell.

My system install is $1,500.

Ten installs.

That's it.

Ten.

My mind didn't immediately begin searching for another occupation, another business model or another way out.

It reminded me of The Pursuit of Happyness. When the machine needed fixing, the answer wasn't to abandon the intended path every time something went wrong.

Fix the machine.

Sell the machine.

Continue.

That thought made me proud of myself because I recognized the mind producing it.

The system already exists.

Potential clients exist.

Therefore the problem becomes operational.

How do those two things meet?

That is a solvable problem.

Recognition and Value Are Not Synchronized

Recently I saw a brief piece about Vincent van Gogh and found myself thinking about the strange relationship between creation and recognition.

History contains people whose work was poorly understood during their lifetime and extraordinarily valued later.

I don't romanticize that.

I have every intention of being here to experience what my work becomes.

What interests me is the distance that can exist between the creation of something valuable and the moment other people recognize its value.

Recognition and value are not synchronized.

The work can exist before the audience understands it. An idea can be strong while its distribution is still developing. A product can be complete while the pathways leading people toward it are still being built.

That realization places another responsibility on the creator.

Creating isn't the end of the work.

I also have to build the pathway through which what I create can be found, understood, purchased and used.

That is part of the work too.

And strangely, I find that encouraging.

A pathway can be built.

Fix the Machine

Something else happened in my thinking recently that showed me how much I've changed.

I thought about money.

Not abstract wealth. A number.

$15,000.

My mind immediately translated that number into units of production.

My system install is $1,500.

Ten installs.

That's it.

Ten.

I noticed what my mind didn't do.

It didn't immediately begin searching for another occupation, another business model or another way out.

It reminded me of The Pursuit of Happyness. When the machine needed fixing, the answer wasn't to abandon the intended path every time something went wrong.

Fix the machine.

Sell the machine.

Continue.

I was proud of my mind for going there.

The system exists.

The market exists.

My job is to build the pathway between them.

That's operational.

And operational problems can be solved.

Hope Has a Job

I used to think hope was mostly emotional.

Something you held onto.

Something that made difficult circumstances easier to tolerate.

I'm beginning to see it differently.

Hope can be productive.

That kitchen I visit in my mind isn't asking me to sit around admiring countertops I don't currently own.

It sends me back to the keyboard.

It makes me write the article.

Build the page.

Finish the system.

Publish the work.

Learn what I need to learn and return tomorrow.

The vision has a job.

It pulls action out of me.

And every action gives the vision somewhere to land.

Sometimes You Become Her First

There is something deeply reassuring to me about realizing that the surroundings don't have to change at the same speed I do.

I don't need to wait for a different room to become the woman who will eventually live there.

I can meet her now.

Actually, I think I already have.

She's the woman drinking coffee and writing in the morning.

She's the woman building something she intends to own.

She's the woman learning to stay with an idea long enough to see what it can become.

She's the woman who can look at information without turning it into an indictment of herself.

She's the woman who sees the next move and makes it.

One day I expect the surroundings to look very different.

There will be a kitchen.

There will be a patio.

I still want the pool, the fountain and those gardenias.

And I'll probably carry that same old coffee mug outside with me.

But when I get there, I don't think I'll feel as though I've finally become someone new.

I think I'll recognize her.

She was already here.

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