The Making of "My One Thing" (part 1)

photo by Kylie Bellard

For much of my life, I feel like I've been on a quest for a clear, singular identity.
It's as though I've always been looking for my One Thing.

In the video I posted earlier this week, I tell the story of how this quest for my One Thing goes back at least as far as high school, when my external Band Geek and Nerd personas overshadowed my secret identities of Goth Girl and Hippie Chick. I tell how this search for my true self continued through college and into my adult life, eventually showing up in my work as a writer and creative entrepreneur.

I don't spend much time on this last point, but it's reason I ended up making the video in the first place.

Let's back up a bit.

For several years I've been struggling to define what my work in this world really is all about. In this blog post from November 2011, I wrote:

Lately I've been thinking a lot about what I'm really called to do in this world. I know I'm meant to write, but is there a deeper purpose to my stringing together words that sound and taste good? I feel a lot of angst around this question. I just want to create beautiful stories with meaning. Is that enough?

It's that last question that had me tied up in knots: Is that enough?

Is it enough to bring beauty, meaning, and connection into the world?

Is it enough to write and tell stories?

These questions were eating away at me.

Spoiler alert, here's the answer: Of course it's enough!

I know that now. I knew it then, too, but I was just afraid to embrace it. I kept wondering if I shouldn't be doing something more:

I know other writers who feel called to use their words and work for social justice, for peace, for emotional healing, for environmental responsibility. I care about all of those issues and more, and sometimes I may write about them. But I keep wondering what my "thing" is, as though I have to declare some sort of stance, to choose a major in this university of life. This obsession is curious, since I'm not much for labels or structures or limits. I'm rarely able to choose a straight and narrow path and declare absolute allegiance to one thing over another. I'm not suggesting that the writers I'm referring to above do this either; everyone is multifaceted and complex, with nuance and shades of personality. But I've been hoping to find that elusive one thing to define myself and my work, something I can call my own, something to call me.

I wanted an easy and accessible answer to the question that inevitably pops up when people discover that I'm a writer: What do you write? I wanted something tangible and concrete on which to hang my shingle.

By last fall, the weight of these questions was becoming debilitating to my work and my business. I couldn't seem to find any answers, and without answers I felt stuck. I didn't know where to focus my energy, what projects to work on, or even who my intended audience was.

Around this same time Tanya Geisler and Michelle Ward launched Golden Ticket, a program for creative women entrepreneurs who love what they do -- and who want to love how they do it. Golden Ticket contained several components, including an online course, live group coaching calls, and the grand finalé: a live, in-person event in New York City.

I recorded "My One Thing" video at that NYC gathering. Working through the Golden Ticket curriculum had helped me to gain clarity about what I bring to my work, what I want to be doing, how I want to offer these things to the world, and to whom. 

Throughout the course, I kept waiting for some big "a-ha!" moment in which I realized that I'd been on the wrong path and needed to scrap everything and start over. I'd figured this was the inevitable outcome. Otherwise, I wouldn't have had so much anxiety about my work, right?

Not so much.

I did have an epiphany, but it wasn't what I'd expected.

Here's what I realized: I'd been asking the wrong questions.

I didn't need to choose "one thing" to define me. I didn't need to try to be "more" by taking on social missions. I didn't need to keep wondering if what I loved was enough. And I didn't need to start over. I just needed to sink deeper into what I love and allow that to set my course.

What do I love?

• Joy
• Wonder
• Beauty
• Meaning
• Connection
• Writing

I want to write about these things.

I want to read about these things.

I want to talk about these things.

One of the exercises in Golden Ticket challenged us to answer this statement: "I want you to know...."

What do I want you to know?

I want you to know the beauty, joy, wonder, and connection of things and unseen.

How's that for a mission statement? If you had asked me that a year ago, I would have worried that it was a piss-poor mission statement, that it wasn't clear, concrete, or concise enough. I'd have worried that you might not understand what I was talking about with such an ethereal and all-encompassing declaration.

But now I know that everything I do, (publishing books, working with other writers, leading classes and workshops, sharing essays about everyday moments, roller derby, and language, sharing writing tips, doing freelance writing and editing) all of it fits and makes sense because all of it comes from my creative center. When I list it all out like that, it doesn't seem so outlandish. Those things obviously go together. But I'd hard the hardest time seeing the forest for the trees, as the saying goes.

As I share in the video, I finally realized that my life and my work are not math problems to be solved. Instead, they're more like mosaics. In a mosaic, many individual pieces come together to create a beautiful whole. 

Aren't we all this way? Multifaceted and messy. Nuanced and complex. Something greater than the sum of our parts.

** ** **
I've had a number of people tell me that they resonate with the message of "My One Thing." There are so many of us trying to figure out where and how we fit. In a world that too often likes easy definitions and right angles, it's not easy to be an amoeba.

I haven't dived deeply into any of these yet, but here are some resources for the mosaics among us. (Thanks to Michelle Ward for recommending them.)

• The Renaissance Soul: Life Design for People with Too Many Passions to Pick Just One, by Margaret Lobenstine
• Refuse to Choose! A Revolutionary Program for Doing Everything That You Love, by Barbara Scher
• Renaissance Business: Make Your Multipotentiality Your Day Job (ebook), by Emilie Wapnick, creator of the website Puttylike.com: a Home for Multipotentialites

Comments

[deb]

" ... as though I have to declare some sort of stance, to choose a major in this university of life." Oy, girlene, that is a mouthful and a half. Thanks for that. And all that you got and gave from the Golden experience.

Smooches,
D

[Kim]

I think this is beautiful and joyful, and I am so glad you wrote it. It sings.