by Joey | Jun 30, 2016 | Writing
At the start of this year, I made a very specific but overly unlikely goal.
I want to buy a new car, I said. And I want to pay for it with writing.
At the time of that statement, I was blogging regularly but otherwise not actively writing. And to be honest, my intention behind that goal was to acquire an agent, secure a publisher, snag a book deal,
and buy a car.
That’s what success looked like to me at that time. That’s what writing looked like to me at that time.
So what if I told you that I bought a car in February, and as of this month, I’m paying for it with writing.
You all know I left my job at the start of June. I’d tucked away a little money, and I launched a business with a friend. The only thing unaccounted for when I left my job was my car payment. I told myself that I was resourceful and that I’d figure it out.
A few months ago, the Charlotte Agenda put a call out for writers. Every friend in the area screen-shot the posting and sent it to me. You have to do this, they said. Panic and fear bubbled into my throat. Sure, I said. I’ll apply, I lied, then promptly put it out of my mind. I can’t do that, I told myself. I’m not a real writer.
As you know, we lost my dad in January. My mom, still at the house I grew up in, lives in Raleigh. The loss was a huge part of my decision to leave my job. I craved the freedom to work remotely, especially from my mom’s kitchen table. I wanted the opportunity to spend more time in Raleigh without committing to move there.
One day after I put in my notice, I saw a tweet that the Charlotte Agenda was expanding to….you guessed it…Raleigh.
Without hesitation, I sent in an email. I figured it was a long shot anyway, so I rationalized that if I didn’t get it, no big deal.
Well. I got it.
I returned home late last night after spending a quick 48 hours in Raleigh, conducting interviews, snapping pictures, scoping out stories, and spending time with my mom. I got there and back safely in the car I pay for with writing.
Be stubborn about your goals but flexible about your methods.
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by Joey | Jun 28, 2016 | Throwback
I’ve had a lot of pinch me moments in the last few weeks. First with New York, then turning 30 surrounded by my best friends, and now with the business.
Those moments give me pause. I spent a lot of time devastatingly unhappy in the last year. I lost a lot of time marinating in loss and an accepted reality.
When you feel trapped in the life you’re living, it’s impossible to see the other side of anything. It’s hard to see your way out. Maybe what you’re doing isn’t so bad. Maybe it’s actually not bad at all, it’s just not what you want. But you feel like you have to do it. You feel like you don’t have a choice.
I was waiting until I felt ready, until I knew everything, to make a change. I felt desperate to know exactly how things would go. I needed a seamless, easy transition. I was afraid of the judgements, what people would say. I was afraid people would call me foolish, or worse selfish, for wanting a change.
The life we had was good. Fine. Enough. It was comfortable and easy. But we weren’t happy. And when that’s the only reason, it’s hard to justify making a change without feeling selfish.
My job wasn’t making me unhappy exactly, but it was contributing to my life of unhappiness. And leaving my job would disrupt a lot of things. It would dry up my income entirely. It would rattle the lives of of children I came to love. It wasn’t an easy choice to make, and it terrified me to make it. I like order and reliability, and I was willingly throwing that out the window without knowing everything.
So when I see what at my life has looked like the last month since I left my job, full of all those pinch me moments, I feel proud. Not the bad kind of pride that the bible says you shouldn’t have. Just the pat-yourself-on-the-back kind for being faced with something hard and turning it around.
I’d say I’m lucky, but it has nothing to do with luck. All it takes is dedication and some hard work.
Accept the fact that you don’t have to know everything to make a change. In fact, accept that you probably won’t always know everything. It’s a little uncomfortable being uncertain, but it sure beats being unhappy.
So just decide what you want
and go get it.
You’ll learn what you need to know
along the way.
In case you missed it, Myra and I launched our business Bliss Creative Services last week. If you like the content you see here, be sure to check out The Bliss Blog for new content every Monday and Wednesday!
by Joey | Jun 23, 2016 | Writing
Something you might not know is that I actually went to college for writing. My aunt gave me a journal for my tenth birthday. It was yellow with little blue flowers on it. I don’t know what prompted her to pick that gift for me, but she’s always had an odd all-knowing sense about me. The rest, as they say, is history.
It took me longer than I care to admit to realize that writing was a talent. Because I’ve always done it, and I’ve always wanted to do it, I didn’t realize that not everyone has that urge, that craving to write.
Much like the urge to pee, it can’t be ignored. When it hits, I have to do it. Whether in a notebook, on a scrap of paper, or tapping away on a computer, come hell or high water, I’ve written nearly every day since that day I got my first journal.
One blog, one book, and a million false starts later, I have some thoughts to share with you.
You just have to sit down and start.
If I actually wrote as often as I think about writing, I’d be a world famous writer on a fancy book tour already. The truth is, I agonize over finding time, making time, being in the mood more than I actually just sit down and write. I’ve come to find that if you just sit down, eliminate the distractions, once you’re doing it, it comes to you.
It’s not as glamorous as people make it out to be.
I like the cafe-writing-lifestyle as much as the next girl, but most of the time it looks nothing like that. More often than not, I’m sitting with unwashed hair in mis-matched pajamas staring bleary-eyed at a computer screen for hours only to delete every word I wrote the next day.
Everyone does it differently.
The number one question I got asked after publishing Yeah, maybe was how I did it. I had people sending me their outlines, their ideas, etc, looking for approval and validation. And I told every single person the exact same thing: I can’t tell you how to do this. You have to do it whatever way feels right to you. If sitting down and outlining every chapter feels right, then do it. If developing your characters is all you need, do that. For me, all I did was create the town, the school, and the characters. I had literally no idea where the book would take me. I just put the characters into the world I created, sat down every week (I wrote a chapter a week), and let them take me wherever they wanted to go.
A first draft is just telling yourself the story.
At least it was for me. Like I said, I just created the people and the place and let them run rampant. It was really freeing to know that everything I wrote didn’t have to stay. Sometimes after writing something, I’d feel it in my gut that it wasn’t right. It taught me a lot about who I wanted my characters to be and how they actually behaved.
Insecurity doesn’t go away after publishing.
At least it didn’t for me. I spent a lot of time waiting for validation as a writer. Waiting for that one moment when there was a clear definitive answer, a before and after. I wasn’t a writer and now I am. It never came. It doesn’t matter what degree I have, how many blog posts I write, how many articles I contribute or how many books I publish, I’ve come to accept that there is no clear before and after with art. The clarity and validation looks and feels different for everyone.
The one overarching truth I’ve found in the writing world is that everyone is different. Lean inside yourself, find your voice and use it.
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by Joey | Jun 21, 2016 | Throwback
On Thursday, I grabbed my computer and set up shop at a Starbucks. I tried to go to one location, but it was packed, not a table in site. So I moseyed on to the next in another neighborhood. Headphones in, I found the zone, happily working away.
Suddenly, a face appeared in mine. I pulled my headphones from my ears to hear I thought that was Joey!
If there’s one thing I love about Charlotte, it’s that it’s a big enough city to stay interesting, but small enough to feel like you know your neighbors. This sweet friend took a seat, and we chatted, an impromptu coffee date. My favorite.
As we chatted, she shared her story. Recently laid off, she found herself in a place of uncertainty. Well, I asked her. What do you want to do? It was then that she gave me a very specific answer, followed up with and now I just have to find that position.
Create it, I told her.
As we chatted, spitting ideas out, I could feel the energy around us. It’s the happiest I’ve felt in a really, really long time, sitting there with a friend dreaming up a life. I love staring the impossible in the face and finding a way to make it reality. I’m doing it myself right now, and while I’m definitely no expert at it, I’ve collected some wisdom through this journey. And sharing it with her, trying to fill her up with the confidence I feel for her, I felt electric. I felt purpose. I felt intention.
It’s not enough for me to chase my dreams. I want everyone else to feel this feeling. I want everyone else to find the strength inside of themselves and trust it.
When she left, I texted a friend. I feel like the inside of my heart is going to explode. My friend came in, unsure and possibly a little scared of what comes next. And in an hour conversation, she buzzed off, excited. A shift in her perspective. If I’d found a table at my first choice Starbucks, last Thursday would have been a regular old boring day. Serendipity.
I just love the universe sometimes. Putting people into our paths intentionally, a service to each of us.
I went on to have an incredibly productive, joy-filled day, one little victory after another. Then sitting at dinner with my girlfriends, my coffee-date buddy walked up to the table: this is officially the best day ever.
I haven’t seen her in a year. Not once have we run into each other accidentally despite how close we live to one another. But when we both needed it the most, we found each other.
And that, my friends, is pretty damn cool.
by Joey | Jun 16, 2016 | Throwback
Myra and I signed our partnership agreement on Monday. A two hour long meeting resulted in squeals and cheers. I can’t believe we’re here, I said to her, unable to swallow my smile. And then I got teary.
The story here is this: I wanted to try my hand at business again. When I launched Blush (RIP), I had an idea, created a website, and launched in about a week. Not to say that’s not possible, but it didn’t work for me. The few gigs I got I hated. I dissolved the company within a couple months. Good riddance.
Blush was a communications business. Whatever that is. Even I still don’t really know. But it sounded good. It sounded official and cool and important. Okay.
I admitted earlier this week that I began feeling an urgent need to spend time with my mom after my dad’s death. I worked full-time as a nanny, so darting off to Raleigh wasn’t always an option, and I started to wonder if I could work full-time from home. Just me and my computer. A friend suggested I look for Virtual Assistant jobs. So I did.
Something felt wrong, though. I’m sure part of it was that I couldn’t imagine leaving the family I worked for. I’m sure the other part was that I’d be jumping from one thing to another without any real purpose besides getting to work from home. I wanted more.
That’s when Jennifer suggested creating a virtual assistance business. The idea was intriguing, so I started brainstorming. Thinking. Taking my time. Testing and changing until things began to take shape and started to feel right.
I was only a couple months into the process when Myra and I were having one of our facetime dates.
Side note: Myra is my person. She’d been with me every step of the way up until that point, reviewing design, providing input on ideas, offering strategy and advice simply as my friend.
She and I were chatting about everything and anything. It came up that she was feeling the itch to get back into the workforce. It was then that the idea hit me, but I almost dismissed it. Still unsure if Bliss was really even going to be anything, I had my own insecurities. I swallowed them down and asked.
Well, would you have any interest in coming in on Bliss with me?
That has to be the closest I’ll ever feel to asking someone to marry me. I felt exposed, vulnerable, unsure but oh so excited at the idea. Luckily, she answered with a squeal and an enthusiastic YES!
Since that day, we’ve taken one step at a time. Little by little. I was still working full-time. She’s raising her 5-month-old all the way in Amsterdam. Bite sized pieces brought us here.
The point is, the hustle looks different for everyone. And the hustle doesn’t have to be exhausting and draining. For us, it’s been quite the opposite. What we’ve been working on brings us joy and energy, filling us with excitement and enthusiasm. Passion.
Six months ago, all of this felt overwhelming, impossible.
One day at at time.
One foot in front of the other
And now we’re here!
