Flake Practice

As a gift for my departure from teaching four of my favorite co-workers purchased three 1-hour sessions with a life coach, Leah M. We've worked with this coach before -- she's consulted on some crucial issues at school -- and I have the highest regard for her so I was very pleased to receive the gift.

Today was our first "hour" though as hours go, it went a bit longer. I'd met with Leah once before at the beginning of last school year when I was thinking about this transition away from teaching and toward something else.

Okay, I'm not supposed to say "something else." I'm supposed to name the thing I want to be seen as, so therefore I must say, "away from teaching and toward a life as a writer."

Whew, that was hard.

What I like about Leah is her clarity. She is able to listen for 10 minutes to my babble about this past month of "chosen unemployment" and cut right to the chase.

"It seems to me," she said in that deep-voiced way she has of summing it all up, "you need to practice being a flake."

I laughed on the outside, but cringed on the inside. If there is one thing I don't want to be seen as it's a flake. Of course, Leah heard the laugh and saw the cringe.

"That feels scary to you, doesn't it?" at which point she laid her hand on my arm.

"Yeah, I suppose it does." At least I was truthful. "Tell me more about what you mean."

And with that invitation, Leah spent the next 50 minutes exploring my biggest issues. They are as follows:

1) My self image

This is complicated, but her message was actually quite simple. Our lives are our stories. How we wish to tell that story has a multitude of possibilities, but often we tell the story based what we think others want to hear or assume others have formulated about us.

Case in point: Over the Fourth of July weekend, Ann and I went to visit my brother and sister-in-law in Oregon. They were headed to a potluck the day we arrived and invited us along. In the drive there we talked about how I struggle with the question, "What work do you do?" because I am currently not working. They offered up suggestions. My job was to practice with people I don't know and may never meet again.

Within a matter of minutes of arriving at the potluck, the question came up. Ann, my brother, and sister-in-law all looked in my direction. They waited for me to say some of the lines we'd practiced in the ride over. "I am retired." "I'm choosing to be unemployed." "I'm in transition."

A long pause ensued. Finally in the silence I heard each of them offer up a response. "She's going to be a dog trainer." "She's taking time away from teaching to explore her options." "She's a writer."

"Why couldn't you say any of those things?" Leah asked me.

"Because none of them feels honest," I replied.

"What's not honest about them?"

"Well, I'm not a dog trainer yet, I'm not really exploring my options, and I don't see myself as a writer yet."

"Why not?" and before I could answer, Leah went on to say, "Because you have yet to publish? You write, don't you? You write every day. Okay, so maybe you haven't published yet, but that's not writing, that's the business of writing. You write and therefore you are a writer. You need to say it so you can come to truly believe it and when you truly believe it, you will live it."

This is when we started the discussion about success and what it meant to me. What a loaded question. I have no idea, though Leah claims the way I live my life means I do have a very firm, though unstated idea of what it means. "You're afraid of being a flake," she said. "You're afraid others who don't even know you will look at your life and say, 'Now there's a flake,' but that's the story you're telling yourself that they're telling themselves. They aren't saying any of that and besides, what's wrong with being a flake? What if you spent the next few months practicing being a flake? What would be the worst thing that could happen?"

Which lead us into the discussion about...

2) Living in fear

At various times in my life, I have let fear control my choices. Every time I overcame the fear and moved forward, I have been a happier person, rewarded for not living in fear.

This is one of my crucial obstacles with writing. I must send out work and face rejection. Therefore, to avoid the rejection, I don't send out work.

"Rejection is an indication that you are doing the right thing," Leah interjected and her statement stopped me in my tracks. "If you don't put anything out there, you'll never have an acceptance, you'll just constantly assume you'll be rejected. You're going to be rejected and rejection is the nature of the game. They aren't rejecting you. They are rejecting that what you've offered doesn't work for them at this time. But at some point, what you've offered will fit in with someone's desires and you will have an acceptance. Once you get that, you begin working the relationship. Rejection is only 10% about you. It's 90% about them. Crave rejection. Go after it and rejoice when they come back to you because that means someone's reading your stuff, someone's listening. And the more you throw out things that might be rejected, the more acceptance you'll find."

Which lead us, in a roundabout way, to this...

3) Success means I need to be doing something at all times...

"We are products of our middle class upbringing," Leah said. "We have learned in the most subtle of ways that if we aren't doing something, then we are failures. But we must learn to change that language and select what we wish to be doing. This may mean doing a lot of things for a short amount of time, but eventually you define yourself as desiring to do this and not wanting to do that. You define who you are by doing and by not doing. You get to choose."

My homework for the next week:

Try out different experiences. Apply to different jobs, but go into them knowing that I get to decide if I want the job or not. If there is one I want to do and end up not liking it, try something else. I am not a flake if I do this. I am just trying to find what fits best for me. Give myself space to write, send the writing out, and let the "job" come to me, the one that works well with the writing.

In other words, practice being a flake or what I define as being a flake.

I'll see how it goes...