"I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth; do you not perceive it? Isaiah
Just Say Yes!
I am planning on starting my own writing business and starting a new Web site to go with it. You're looking at the new Web site. I am getting bored freelancing writing projects for clients even though I try to only take on those that are spiritually uplifting and beneficial to others. Sometimes I slip and take on projects just to make money, and I end up bored and frustrated that I am just typing and wasting my time. I want to write about things that will make a difference in the world. Don't get me wrong. I'm not totally full of arrogance and I don't think that what I do, say or write is world altering, but I do believe in the maxim, "Let it begin with me." The world can't evolve to pure love and higher consciousness, which is what is intended by its creator, if each of us isn't evolving.
So I am starting my new business, if you want to call it that. I don't care if it makes a profit or any money at all. I do care if people read it because I want word to get out there about the things I plan to write about. But before I give you an idea of what those things will be, I have a confession to make.
I must fight pride, greed and grandiosity every day like they are crabgrass in my well-manicured lawn. I think I have seen the end of those nasty things sprouting up, and look what just grew right before my eyes. I took hold of this inspiration to start a new career, and the next thing I knew I was spending hours online researching social media networking, marketing, e-mail marketing, logos, branding, domain registration, target audience, increasing traffic,.. On and on I went with the small business details that had never occurred to me when I first thought I was meant to write about some new things that would help others save the world.
I acted on many of them too. I joined so many social media I couldn't keep passwords straight and got locked out of LinkedIn not once but twice. I let LinkedIn use my personal address contacts to invite strangers and acquaintances to connect with me. It was pretty awkward. I don't know what some of those people were doing in my address book.
I networked like a Avon Lady on crack. I joined so many groups I couldn't remember what I had joined. I didn't get much done on my new business because I was spending half of my days trying to learn the ins and outs of Twitter for business including lesser important things like how to decorate my Twitter page.
On and on it went. And every morning I would wake up realizing that I was no closer to starting anything new no less a business.
I was reading Deepak Chopra's The Spontaneous Fulfillment of Desire at the time and came across this: "What we put our attention on blossoms. What we withdraw our attention from withers."
I asked myself if I really aspired to becoming a Twitter star.
I did some self-reflecting, journal writing, praying and meditating. I also re-read some of my old journals to look for past errors in judgment and found plenty of places where pride, greed and grandiosity had been my downfall. I also saw where doing my will instead of God's will had nearly destroyed me several times.
There are no coincidences, only miracles to which God doesn't sign his/her name. I read a quote from Marianne Williamson (Gift of Change) in one of my old journals that got me where I needed to be hit:
"All we need to remember is this: If God has given us a job to do, He will provide for us the means by which to accomplish it. All we have to do is ask Him what He wants us to do and then be willing to do it."
"All we have to do..." That certainly does keep it simple, doesn't it? It didn't say anything about web hosting, marketing, social media, networking, traffic building, polls and surveys, analytics or any of the other garbage I'd been taking crash courses on to get rich and famous, or at least to become moderately successful, which is dangerous enough for someone with my character defects.
And worse yet, I had been figuring that in order to be moderately successful I would have to sacrifice my one true voice. and not be 100 percent authentic in my writing. I would have to play the game to be popular. I would have to write about topics that people expected on a writer's site and that would help sell my services. I would have to keep my personal opinions and beliefs to myself. I would have to do as all the writing newsletters and blogs I was studying were tell me ad infinitum and produce a Web site that sold my writing services by writing about writing.
Personally, I thought these sort of Web sites were a dime a dozen. I had read about 30 of them just since I started researching for the new business/Web site. You read one, you read 'em all, I had been thinking, but I know that's not really true. I was burned out on them. I even prepared myself to spend some time writing about that most boring facet of writing of all, the one that even many writers detest--grammar. I would do it too if it would help Alexa to show me good page rank. I would offer it up to the suffering blog writers with little traffic and no AdSense income. I wanted to sell more articles.
Hell, what kind of articles would I end up writing? Probably much the same as the non-spiritual, non-beneficial ones I occasionally slipped up and took on Elance.com occasionally. Talk about from the frying pan to the fire! And I couldn't just change my mind once I took a job. I would have overhead to think of, maybe employees to pay. I would have to write for every project that came my way. I would be as trapped as I would if I were putting on pantyhose every morning and sitting in a cubicle from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Sweat ran from my pits down to my knees at the thought, and my stomach rolled over like I was on Space Mountain.
Greed doesn't pay. Pride does indeed go before the fall.
Finally I calmed down enough to get in conscious contact with God, or whatever you prefer to call the divine force within, and then I asked myself what I truly wanted. Where did my passion lie? What would I really truly like to write about and would it make a difference?
The topics started flowing so quickly I couldn't get to my yellow legal pad fast enough. I simply wanted to help others to make a difference. I always want to make a difference, but usually can't find a pen, a stamp or an envelope to write my Senator. I want to make a difference but lose the Web site address with the street address of where to go to sign up to volunteer, and can't exactly remember the name of the organization. I have adult deficient disorder (A.D.D.) and every task is a monumental production for me.
Parents of small children must think their job for the day is done if they can find their car keys and get all of their kids collected and home safely after school one way or another. Or as I once heard on a TV show, I think it was Roseanne, "If those kids are still alive at the end of the day, I've done my job as far as I'm concerned."
How well I remember the days when a note from the teacher requesting something didn't surface until breakfast time on the day she wanted it. Panic would go through the house like wildfire. God forbid she would think I was a bad mother. I didn't expect any breaks just because I worked and had two small children.
And what about the disabled person who sometimes must depend on others to take care of getting certain things done like typing a letter when you don't have hand movement?
Or what if you have no reason in the world, but you are just more likely to pitch in and help out when everything is right in front of you and all you have to do is point and click? I liked the idea. I believe God likes it too.
So what kinds of things will I write about? Here is some of the topics that came to me like gangbusters when I asked myself what I really wanted to write about:
1. On July 12, 2010 Veterans in this country won a long fought battle to simplify access to health care and benefits for those with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). We have come a long way from the Bush days and many Vets will finally get the help they need. One in five veterans returning from Iraq reported a mental health problem and combat exposure is an important contributing factor.
Does this new legislation mean that all Vets will finally be receiving the Veteran benefits they and their families are entitled to? Or will we still be reading impossible to grasp stories of Vets who are denied benefits for loopholes beyond reason, or Vets who finally received benefits after their death that they never knew in life they had coming?
I believe one of the best Web sites by Veterans for Veterans on benefit entitlement and some unbelievable injustice by the VA is VAWatchdog.
You can also get a free complete 95-page of the Veterans 2010 benefits on this Web site.
Sign up to volunteer to help this and other Vet organizations that help Vets get justice. Another good one asking for help with this is VetVoice. Or buy some tickets to entertainment and sports venues that specific Vets have requested at Veterans Tickets.
I tell you I read some pitiful stories about Vets going without after proudly serving this country. It is a shame I hope we can recover from someday.
I also plan to write about how parents who work year round, like most of us, can start a day care co-op since sitters and day care costs are astronomical. I'd like to let parents know where to get cheap or free cloth diapers, as the disposable ones are a terrible pollution problem for Mother Earth. How and where to get free tuition, scholarship and e-courses for every level from non-credit through graduate. Where to get free software, e-books, magazines, newspapers and newsletters. Where to go to get help if you're a victim of domestic violence. How to really get free or sliding scale legal help. How and where to get free everything decent and worth having I can find. How to find the purpose of your life. Where to go and what to if your hacked, and how to prevent it in the first place. What you can do for the whales, dolphins, rain forest, poor, homeless, unemployed, disabled, overwhelmed and confused among others. Where and how to write and make phone calls to get real action and what kinds of action we need now, and many more too lengthy to list here.
I hope you will continue to join me here, and be ready to create some change in our world.
And I'll also still be writing about spirituality and writing and giving my personal opinions on whatnot as usual at MsRefusenik Tells It All.MsRefusenik Tells It All.
