Coming Up Dry

You know the feeling: you have a critical delivery and you have to strut your stuff. It may be a long-wished-for and hard-earned sales presentation, your first time at the Court of Appeal, or your first big job for the city. But no matter what, you just can’t get it together, and the closer the date, the more you want to run and hide.

Now, running and hiding may seem pretty attractive, but there are two problems associated with it. Maybe three. First, they will always find you. Two, it doesn’t make the matter go away. And, I suppose, it’s kind of embarrassing.

So assuming that you are too grown up to run and hide, what do you do when you have a date with destiny and not the first clue where to begin? Like, for instance, this particular edition of my blog.

The biggest problem for all of us who are professionals is that you know darn well that you should be able to do this thing with your eyes closed. After all, you’re in the place and doing the thing you were born to do, and your life experience and your training have equipped you to perform the task perfectly. But nothing happens.

This blog, for instance, is the fourth attempt. Three previous half-written pieces sit in inventory, waiting for the supply chain to add some inspiration. And therein is the secret: even if you don’t feel inspired, you need to put one foot in front of the other until something, anything, takes shape. To use another analogy, if you turn the crank enough, ultimately something will begin to happen.

Trade-mark applications, policy papers, building specifications- hardly the stuff of Hollywood drama, yet they need your expert eye and natural talent. But on those days you wish Grammarly and Spellcheck could just write the thing, you simply need to sit at your desk and write one word, then another, then another until you get to the end. Even if it looks horrid.

Master craftspeople suffer the same crisis from time to time– they are professionals, too. Painters and pipefitters and cabinet makers all have days when they’d like to go home and let the apprentice do the job, but they can’t. No matter how much you love your trade, there are days when you think all the talent lives next door.

The truth, though, is that you can do this thing. You’ve done it before, or at least you’ve done most parts of it, and you’ve done them well. You know that all your friends, family, and colleagues would laugh if you said you couldn’t do it. There’s nothing wrong with you or your skills, it’s just that the thing just doesn’t want to ignite.

Knowing that you have no choice but to produce something (i.e., you’d be somewhat less embarrassed to produce mediocre work than nothing at all) you just put one foot in front of the other, again and again. What happens, without fail, is that as the work begins to take shape, your best self awakens to criticize the mediocre work, tweaking here and polishing there, until a magic moment occurs when what is in front of you is art, not commodity.

Remember, if you dwell in the place you were meant to be, nothing can keep you down.