It’s hard for me to listen to a great podcast or watch a mega-influencer’s youtube video and not get just a little bit jealous.
Hey, what about me?
I’ve got important things to say. I’ve got content. I’m worth a thousand likes.
The truth is, I’ve tried to make it. Well, sort of. It’s been an embarrassingly short oddyssey.
Facebook, Instragram, Medium, LinkedIn… in that order. I couldn’t appease the algorithms. More than that, I was posting more than I wanted to, saying things I didn’t really mean, and following people I didn’t really care about. I became just another coach with great ideas, elbowing for comments, fighting for eyeballs. There’s a lot of us out there, waving our hands, overflowing with passion and optimism.
I hate feeling common.
So I ditched it – the dream, if you want to call it that.
But, ya know, then I’ll have this awesome call with a client or with my brother or get a sweet response on this blog (love those comments, people) and all the ideas for world domination come rushing back in. I think of the articles I’ve written and the unfinished books and half webinars nestled in my “Brilliant Brainstorms” folder.
I don’t know. Maybe a podcast this time.
I feel so close to something great, like I’m on the edge of a tornado.
Maybe I could do something on Tik Tok…
Just the thought makes the winds die down.
Wait.
What am I really after, here?
And do I already have it?
I laughed with a client. I laughed with my brother. Both of them thanked me for what I do. I made my babysitter cry with the resume I created for her. Like really cry. Not the first time. And I wrote something good, something that warmed me up on the inside and touched a few hundred people — people I know and who know me. And when I touched my wife’s shoulder, after all these years, she still smiled.
Then I went outside and read a book in the sun on the deck with my dog.
Wisdom is a funny thing. It’s like it’s always there but you just lose sight of it, like a billboard obscured by a tree bending in the wind.
There’s a message up there that any of us can read at any time, but we’re all so busy being tricked by the tree and the winds while we look for the people who are looking for us.
The beautiful thing is we’re all standing right next to each other.
Tornado or not.