What comforts you?

You may have noticed that it's been more than two months since my last post. In that time, I had to contend with a triple whammy of very unserene things:

* That illness I described? Just today I was told I'm healed. I may still have surgery at the end of the month.
* Someone stole my credit card number and my bank shut down my card without telling me, leading to some rejected monthly expenses that I now have to make up. Now I'm going to start the process of ordering my credit reports to make sure there's nothing fishy on there.
* Our 17-year-old love-muffin kitty passed away rather traumatically in the middle of the night.
* Deadlines continued to come and go throughout. I queried, I networked and I worked on getting better at workflow and time management.

You may be asking, "How do you stay serene amid so many challenges?" The answer, at least according to my experience, is you don't.

You fall apart. And you hang on for dear life to the things that comfort and the things that keep you sane, if not serene.

It turns out that for me, that thing is gardening.

I have idyllic memories of running through my mother's garden as a child, eating strawberries and raspberries off the vine and hiding behind tall, feathery corn stalks in the arid heat of a southern California summer. From the time I put my first bean in a wet napkin and watched it grow into a plant, gardening filled me with hope: transformation, growth and life are all around us if we want it.

So I have lettuce and green beans to eat from my garden and every day I go out and watch the plants for a little bit. I do a little weeding, I sweep up, I water. I watch the basil seeds sprout. I feel hopeful.

What's fallen off is a lot of the more rigid structure I created for my day: I don't do yoga regularly right now, on the advice of my chiropractor, who is trying to correct a stuck s-bone in my pelvis. I don't take a break every hour and stretch right now. I don't turn off the TV at 10 p.m. sharp, and often leave it on till 11 or later to avoid thinking about the grief and stress that's always just under the surface.

What's perhaps most useful is to look at what I stuck with throughout this time. These are the changes that, so far, are sticking. And I think they show that some small changes can make a big difference.

* I still go to the gym two to three three times a week for gentle cardio and some good stretching.
* I still meditate and write about what's stressing me out first thing in the morning. I know meditating twice a day would probably bring me more relief, but when I'm in grief, sitting with my feelings isn't fun and I can only do it in tiny doses.
* I still go through all the emails from yesterday and today first thing in the morning and put them in their own folders. It keeps me up to date and following up on interview schedules.
* I still take the time to make nutritious meals for myself breakfast lunch and dinner. The garden certainly helps with that. I just planted chard and broccoli, and I can't wait for it to be ready in a few months.

I think I stuck with these things because they are very small things I can do to take care of myself when everything around me seems to be falling apart. I don't have the energy for an hour-long yoga practice morning or night right now, but I can spend 10 minutes meditating when I wake up in the morning.

It's the small things that keep me going.

What about you? How do you cope when you're at risk of being overwhelmed?

Cultivating Persistence

I've been a writer and reporter for 15 years, if you include all my schooling. When I started, I was terribly shy. I sat in front of that big, old, clunky, beige phone for an hour sometimes working up my nerve to call a source. I wasn't friendly, or when I was it was forced and, I'm willing to bet, creepy.

But I loved the writing. Writing was my favorite part. Not that it always came easily, but it was what I got into journalism for. I wanted to write every day.

Today, I'm finally following my dream: I want to write more narrative journalism. There's a reason my Web site is called "Writing with a human face." I want to tell those stories. I want to help readers connect with other people. I want to help foster conversations.

I say all this not to promote my business, but because I'm not entirely there yet. But I'm working on it. If you're reading this, you're working on it, too: You're trying to make writing into a career. You're trying to scale the vertical learning curve that is entrepreneurship and managing business finances and cultivating clients and--oh yeah--writing really well.

The way this happens is messy. Take this great, great clip from Ira Glass of This American Life (and really, who doesn't want to be Glass when they grow up?):



This is the same advice that the Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Tom Hallman gave at a narrative writing workshop I attended recently through The Society of Professional Journalists. The key nugget I took with me, aside from a few techniques was: be persistent and be brave. Admit you're insecure. We're all insecure. Do it anyway.

It's also the same advice that Erik Sherman gives for querying: if you keep doing it, you're guaranteed to succeed. But you have to keep trying.

This advice falls into the category of "serenity tips that make you feel crazy." This one won't feel good. But it's true. So my wish for you this week is that you make another start at the things that feel like you're failing. Keep going. Send that rejected query out one more time. Try again to do some good writing.

Just try. Again. For today.

Serenity Check In: Are You of Service to Your Clients?

Last week I was sick. It's a long story, and ends with surgery next week. Don't worry. It's nothing serious. Jus an outpatient procedure. Still, it's serious enough to cause me to miss work and freak out quite a bit. I couldn't sit at my desk, I was worried sick. I was cranky that I didn't know what caused it or what would happen next. And I couldn't get a single, coherent answer from my healthcare providers.

So it was that I went to the gym on Sunday, in a bad mood and in pain.

I walked out of the gym and ran into some tourists looking for directions to public transit. I showed them the way and we struck up a conversation. It was a beautiful day. And at the end of it, I felt happier and more relaxed.

What happened? I got out of myself and helped someone else.

So while I wait for the surgery, and worry about the results, I'm keeping in mind this week that those five minutes when I was giving directions were five minutes when I wasn't worrying about myself, my health or anything else. It's not that health isn't a totally valid thing to worry about, but frankly, I was burned out on my own self-obsession. It felt good to help someone else and let go of the drama I was creating around myself.

So the name of the game for me this week, and hopefully beyond, is to be of service.

If there's something you're worrying about--if your work is slow, if your bank account is low, if the recession is eating into your sleep--take a tip from me. Be of service.

If you catch yourself obsessing about things out of your control, scan this list and do one:

Be of service to your clients. Have work to do? Do it. Don't think about yourself, and how doing this article or finishing that project will make you a rich and lead to accolades. Just do the work. You're helping your client by focusing all your attention on their needs and their readers' needs. That's what's important right now.
Be of service to your household. Often, I'm too busy fretting to get to that pile of laundry or to wash my dishes. I figure I'm a very busy and important person. I don't have time to do the dishes. Dude, get over yourself. Stop thinking about yourself and just do the dishes. You are providing a service to the people you live with.
Be of service to your loved ones. You may not believe this, but just calling a loved one and telling them you love them is providing them with a huge service. They could be having a horrible day and your call could restore some sanity to their day, too. Just remember: Don't bitch about what's wrong in your day. Listen to *them.* This is about service, not feeding your own drama.
Be of service to yourself. You still and always matter. So when I'm obsessing, I try to break out of it and do the following: I call the doctor to arrange an appointment if I need to. I dye my hair. I go to the gym. I buy and cook healthy food. These are services I do for myself that don't feed whatever I'm obsessed about.

Consider it a mini-holiday from the doom-and-gloom. I write a lot about loving kindness, but that can seem a little to airy-fairy to grasp. Service is much easier. You are spreading loving kindness when you replace your negative obsessions with loving service. And, by the way, you're creating a better world for yourself and those around you.

Namaste.

Serenity Check In: Are Your Clients Your Higher Power?

I write a lot about relying on a Higher Power as a way out of the insanity of focusing on things you can't control. But what happens when you make your clients your Higher Power?

I've been thinking about this a lot lately because I'm working on a story proposal that's really important to me and I have an equally important client interested in the story. As I was working up the proposal, talking to folks, I noticed how ravaged I was by the process: Every time a source said something that backed up my premise, I was elated and excited and deeply convinced that doing this story is my Higher Power's will for me. It felt great to be in that groove. But every time someone said something that contradicted my premise, my self-esteem took a nose-dive and my anxiety level went up five octaves.

What was consistent about both responses was that I couldn't work on anything else the rest of the day. I was emotionally drained by it and in the back of my mind constantly wondering what the potential client might say about each of my sources.

Here's what I know is true:

* I can't read my client's mind, no matter how hard I squeeze my eyes shut and concentrate. I haven't yet developed the skill of clarevoyance.

* I didn't know exactly what she was looking for. She simply asked me to gather information, to report. And it's not my job to manipulate the results into whatever I think the "right" answer will be for me to sell the story.

* This is a great, important story. It just is. And if it's not right for this publication, it's not a judgment of me or the story.

What I realized in looking at all these things is that my spiritual life was askew. Instead of thanking my Higher Power for being my muse and guiding me to this story, I was making this editor my Higher Power. Her opinion was more important than anything else, and upon it all my sense of worth was resting.

She doesn't need that responsibility. And it's not very professional. It reminds me of Liz Strauss's great blog post about what she was looking for in a freelancer. The line that stuck out for me was:

Most freelancers I met with were too worried about my approval. The ones I looked for were the once who looked past me to the folks I was working to serve with my publications. That meant they were helping me think through the needs of my audience.

In other words, I can talk as much as I want about how much it's about the story, but what I'm doing when I'm trying to force a solution and making my client my Higher Power is making it about me. I share this not because I'm a glutton for punishment, but because most of us at some point have made our clients into our Higher Powers by wanting their approval instead of wanting to write a story that serves our client's readership. This is a spiritual malady with a real business consequence.

So for the sake of my business and my serenity, I did a lot of work to realign my spiritual life. Every morning, I've been writing the following. I share it with you in the hopes that it may help you realign your thinking, too, if you're in a similar fix:

* I really want to write this story, and I want to write it for this publication.

* I can really really want something and still hand the results over to my Higher Power.

* I trust that my Higher Power will guide me to the right home for this story and hold me up no matter what.

It's helped tremendously. I keep thinking of that line in Eat Pray Love in which Elizabeth Gilbert writes that "God loves you as you." I don't have to be serene and surrendered and needless or wantless to align my will with my Higher Power's. My Higher Power wants me just as I am--passionate about my work, slightly neurotic, excited about this client and really really focused on trying to make it happen, even though I can't. Oddly, that realization lends me freedom, to want all I want, and know that my wanting doesn't require a response. It can just be what it is.

And then, I can get back to work.

Serenity Tip: PITA tax

I recently finished writing up a story for Yahoo! Hot Jobs on bullying bosses. For it, I had the pleasure of talking to Bob Sutton, author of The No Asshole Rule. Let me assure you that he is not an asshole. In fact, he's a peach--a peach with a foul mouth, but a peach nonetheless.

Here's what I'd like to share with you:

Ditch toxic clients

It's not a revolutionary piece of advice, but it can be a revolutionary activity, especially when we fear for our economic security in the market's downturns. But what Sutton explained to me was that there's never a good time to work for a "certified flaming asshole"--the kind of boss who doesn't respect your time, your talent or your humanity.

If you suspect your client may be a pain in the ass (PITA), consider these three steps:

1) Become AWARE of their asshole status.
Take Sutton's Client from Hell quiz.

2) ACCEPT that they are the asshole, not you.
Chances are that you've been pulling every professional tool in your toolkit out to win this client over and get them to treat you with respect. But what you're really doing is sapping your serenity by trying to control something that's way out of your control. If someone is just a jerk, that's not something that any amount of professional courtesy or spectacular work can cure.

Once you can really accept that, it's easier to do the final step:

3) Take ACTION.
Action doesn't have to mean firing the client--but I could and maybe it should. If that feels too extreme to you, do some thinking: How much would your client have to pay you to compensate for the abuse you're taking?

Need helpl figuring it out? Look at your client mix and crunch some numbers:

* How much time does this client take, both in terms of hours worked and minutes spent answering follow-ups, traveling to your client's office, number of phone calls, etc.

* How much time does this client take in terms of the amount of time you spend debriefing with your support network and thinking about this client? Those are hours you could be spending marketing yourself and working on other paying assignments.

* How much time do you spend on personal time thinking about this client, resenting this client and being mad at yourself for not being able to convince him or her that you are a trustworthy, professional worker?

Now, add up those hours and multiply it by your hourly rate.

That's your client's PITA tax. You can up it by general emotional pain and suffering if you want.

But you can also contact your client and tell them that you've revised your business plan and that your new rate for them will be $XXX.

Of course, the best option is probably to dump the client--and seeing how much time that client takes up in your work and personal time may give you the willingness to let go of them forever.

I've had clients like this, of course. My main approach with them was to market like crazy to find other clients that could replace them. I also did a lot of writing, talking and praying to be relieved of the obsession with this client and the feeling that I needed them. I also had to remember that I need to put my faith not in that client but in my Higher Power to give me the career and fulfillment I was looking for.

Recently, I watched as a freelance friend went through this process. Today, I was gratified to get an email from her saying that she has finally cut the client loose. I said to her, and I'll say to you, that it's been my experience that letting go of those clients will give her so much extra energy that her career will grow because of it.

*

Serenity Tip: Be Honest

I often write about sharing your concerns with safe people--other people in your field with whom you feel comfortable and from whom you experience no ridicule, etc.

But let's be honest: When you're at your reunion, honesty is not the forefront of your mind. I would like to suggest, however, that being honest with your colleagues there can also be wonderful.

This year marks 11 since I graduated from The Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. I know, fancy. To be honest, I've always been a little embarrassed about it. We all joked at the time that we were waiting for the admissions department to drop the bomb: "Oh I'm sorry, we meant to admit Heather Boemer, not Heather Boerner. This nice security guard will escort you out." And when you tell other writers that you went there, they tend to look at you like you're hopelessly pretentious.

So when I went to my 10-year reunion last year, I went with my insecurity in-hand. As a relatively new freelancer, I was taking whatever work I could get. That meant that I snuck into the computer lab there as the students were finishing up their investigative journalism master's projects as I pounded out a 10-page advertorial on... flooring.

Not my most shining moment. And I was pretty ashamed, to be honest. It's not what I thought I'd be doing.

So I was very guarded with my colleagues. I was prepared to tell them just the highlights--"I got my first article with Yoga Journal! I wrote for my first national magazine last year! I write for the San Francisco Chronicle!"--and not the reality.

Something has shifted. I've been emailing with a colleague who writes regularly for the New York Times Science Times about the paper. The shift happened last week when, after I sent that a query to that frightening publication, I asked her, "Were you intimidated? Because I'm scared!"

I know it sounds small, but it changed me, almost molecularly. To be honest with someone I admire, who has the career I want, was scary. When I didn't hear from her for a few days, I was convinced she was sitting in her New York apartment laughing at me.

Then, this week, I got an email relieving me of that delusion. She'd been sick. She told me the story of her first piece for them and how she kept writing for them.

I gave her a chance to be human--and, more importantly, I gave myself a chance to be human. It brought me more peace. It increased my serenity. It brought me relief from my own nagging doubt that I can include myself in her ranks. It's great to not have to pretend.

So for this weekend and for today, I ask you to let someone in to your process, to give up the brave front and be a little more human.

What's Your Treat?

I'm a firm believer in staying in my body. Imperfect as it is, it serves me well, and when I'm connected to it, I have a better chance of maintaining my serenity. It's when i get in my head and start spinning that I forget what I can control and what I can't, and my serenity flies away.

So when I give myself treats, they aren't of the chocolate-and-a-glass-of-wine variety. For me, that stuff just takes me out of my body. And I've found better ways to treat myself without having to leave my body.

Here are my treats:

* Organizing. I know, I'm a freak. Lately, I've been rewarding myself for hard work by scanning in old documents. Yesterday, that means scanning in copies of my old articles from my last full-time newspaper job. It was fun to read through them, see the good work I did and notice how my craft has progressed. I know what I would do differently with my work now.
* A Bath. Dump half a bag of Epsom salts into hot water, line the tub with a few candles and click on the podcasts for This American Life, Wait Wait Don't Tell Me! or Fresh Air and luxuriate for a half an hour.
* Music. At my last full time job, I was chastised for wearing headphones. But one of the joys of self-employment is that I can listen to music as I write this. My current favorites? For people of my generation and particular persuasion, Rhino's Brit Box is like a warm bath and a walk down musical memory lane in one (I mean, come on! Trash Can Sinatras and Inspiral Carpets together? Oh, Rhino, how I love you). Can You Dig It? The Seventies Soul Experience is nothing but goodness. Talk about injecting a little joy into your work day!
* Exercise. Nothing like getting out of my office and breaking a sweat to relieve tension, calm my nerves and boost my mood.
* Friends. Sometimes I do something hard and then call or email a friend--either in my field or not--to share the triumph, the struggle, etc. for a few minutes. Or, even better, lunch or tea.
* Meditation. This is the ultimate get-in-your-body relaxation treat. Even if it's for one minute at my desk, a mini-break is great.

Now, I'm sure you have your own--chocolate or wine included, likely--but here's my question for you: Do you do it?

This is one of those tips you see in women's magazines all the time: Take some "me time." It can feel like a command or threat. My wish for you is that your approach to your treats is gentle. The truth is, we all need rewards for stepping outside our comfort zones. Not giving ourselves them just burns us out quicker.

So if you have a hard time tearying yourself away, think about what your rewards are and what would feel best. It could be that for you, working on a new project is the reward. No reason your reward needs to be mine.