I’m not sure where you are at right now with your career. This is a funny time of the year, as we head towards the slowdown of the holidays. Lots of people have checked out. They are fried from the work, stress and overwhelm of the last year. For others, this is even more challenging. The employment world has taken a massive hit over the past few months. Wide swaths of layoffs have been enacted, and large and small companies are cutting staff as either a result of a recession or in preparation of one.
For solopreneurs, entrepreneurs and creatives, often our approach is a little different. We don’t want to work for someone else. We don’t want to be beholden to someone else’s schedule. We want to create that dream scenario where we do the work that we love, we get paid very well doing it, and we get to help others by doing that work.
But sometimes, it seems too much. Overwhelm slowly creeps in like a long winter shadow. Before you know it, all of these exciting options become the very things that take over our lives- in a bad way. We have so much that we can do that not doing all of them feels like a failure. So we take it all on because we fear missing out or being left behind.
Unfortunately, for too many, they give up. They stop playing their game. It’s not moving fast enough for what they would like. The income right now isn’t what they dreamed of. And because of stress, desperation or lack of focus, they start dropping balls. Before they know it, they are out of the game. They are forced to go do work that is realistic, better paying and soulless.
They no longer play the game that they longed to play.
A few years back, I was wrapping up work late one afternoon when our youngest son, Dylan, asked me to play catch in the backyard. Dylan is usually not much for sports- he would rather find an old stereo or computer to take apart and create something from. As a guy who grew up loving sports, you would have thought that I would have jumped at the opportunity. But on that day, I was tired. I’m fortunate that I truly do get to love the work that I do, but it had beaten me down that afternoon. There was drama that had to be dealt with. I lost control of my focus and felt overwhelmed by a few things. It was one of those days where I could have kept working all night and still not solve everything.
But on the other side of my office door was the adorable little face, wearing a soft hoodie and holding a baseball glove. He was waiting outside to play ball with me. It was one of those moments that, if I made the wrong decision, I would regret for a long time. Any parent knows that these moments- although they seem like they will never end- are fleeting. We don’t see the change in our kids quickly because we are with them so much. But that cute face with those chubby cheeks won’t be at that door forever.
So I took a deep breath, sighed and turned towards my laptop with all of that unfinished work. And I closed it.
I smiled at him. He smiled bigger. We raced downstairs, out the front door and around to the backyard together. Together, we grabbed a few baseballs, my glove and a few bats and ran out to the yard to get started. I pitched and he hit for a while, nailing one that almost made it to the fence. Seeing his proud smile while watching the ball land confirmed that I had indeed made the right call. We then moved on to having a catch.
And as fairytale as this might seem, my head wasn’t in it like it should have been. As much as I enjoyed being out there, my head was still buried in my work. I hadn’t let go of the frustration and angst of my day. But that stress was offset at times by our playfulness, our laughter and his infectious smile.
As much as I would love to tell you that I wanted to soak every moment of that time with him as much as I could, I was kind of looking forward to being done. Dinner was now ready and I was hangry. Hunger and anger lead to hangry. But Dylan didn’t want to stop. He didn’t sense my frustrations and wanted to keep playing. I was trying to find a way to wrap it up. Plus, I noticed near the end that he wasn’t paying attention as much as he did at the start. He was dropping balls while noticing animals in the yard.
So I thought of a way to end it.
“Okay, we need to go have dinner. So here’s the deal. If you drop another ball, we’re done. Okay?,” I said.
“So I have to catch every ball you throw to keep playing?” he asked with a little bit of a whiny tone.
“That’s the deal,” I confirmed. “One drop and we’re done.”
Being that he had dropped two of every three I had thrown to him in the past few minutes, I figured that I would get rid of my hangriness in a matter of minutes.
I didn’t throw the first one high or hard, and he nabbed it. But with each subsequent throw, I added a level of difficulty. It might have been higher. Or faster. Or unexpectedly far to the left. He caught the next one. Then the next one. And then the one after that. And then a few more. Up until that point, he hadn’t caught three in a row. Now he had caught eight in a row. He was jumping up and down, more surprised and proud than cocky and arrogant. He didn’t know he had it in him. Honestly, neither did I.
Nine in a row. Ten in a row! What in the world is going on here? I decided to really challenge him with a fly ball high and straight up in the air. At this point, I wouldn’t be surprised if he caught that too. And he did. Eleven in a row. We were yelling, laughing and hooting so loud that Elizabeth opened the window to see what was going on. Unfortunately, the next ball dropped out of his glove, onto the grass and the streak was over.
But he ran to me, I lifted him up with a big hug, and he carried that ball inside and was next to his plate at dinner. He still has that ball displayed in his bedroom.
That night, I couldn’t stop thinking about what happened. As a dad, I was so proud. I was so proud of his focus and resilience. I loved how he faced the challenge, knew what he wanted and didn’t quit. And he proved so many things to himself that evening.
But business was still on my mind. And I thought about the lesson that he taught me in the backyard.
He wasn’t looking to beat anyone. He wasn’t striving to be the best. All Dylan wanted to do was play the game a little longer. And because of that simple goal, he knew what he needed to do to play the game a little longer. It wasn’t complicated. We didn’t need to talk it out and have a big, philosophical conversation.
Keep catching the ball and you can keep playing.
In business- especially the solopreneur type- it’s exactly the same. We can get so caught up in all of the tasks. We have social media to post to, content to create, people to connect to. We have products and services to sell, bills that need to be paid and a family that needs our time. And too often, we can get caught up in all of the little things, and give them too much time, that we forget to do the things that allow us to play the game longer.
That’s why it’s so important to focus on the financial side of the business. Artists and creatives struggle with this. We want to love our work so much that we forget that if we don’t thrive financially, we will lose the ability to play the game that we love playing.
We hear about so many of the challenges of entrepreneurship, and at the same time, we see the images of those who have created that life of freedom.
For us, it’s about freedom. I love playing this game. And I just want the ability to play the game longer. So I have followed the lead Dylan set. He taught me to focus on what’s important. Catch the ball that’s headed towards me while blocking out the birds, squirrels, brothers and other distractions all around. And when you do- when you do what’s important- you get to keep playing.
Focus. Figure out what matters and what doesn’t. And keep playing the game a little longer.
Have an AMAZING day!
Vincent
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