Go on, Take a step

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

Is there something you’d like to do? Some secret ambition that seems out of reach? Some longing of the heart that you think will never happen?

No, I’m not going to sell you my instant method for achieving this. For one, signing any documents for an impeccably dressed gentleman, a man of wealth and taste, who smiles a lot and smells a little of sulfur. That’s probably bad for you. And though I’m part Nigerian princess (apparently) probably on my father’s side, you’re not my beloved and I don’t have a bank account with a million ill-gotten dollars I need to transfer to you, with which you can achieve your dreams. I can’t even promise that if you do this you will succeed. But I can promise you you’ll get closer.

What’s the miracle action?

Good question, because I have an answer. And you’re not going to like it: Take a step. Take a step towards what you want. Just one. Do it.

Yeah, yeah, journey of one thousand steps starts with a single step and all that. But you know why those sayings persist? Because they have a point. It does start with a step. Which — at some point — makes the next step easier. which makes the NEXT step easier. You might not notice the “easier” part for a 100 or 1000 steps, but eventually it will kick in, I promise.

Want a cleaner house? clean one little corner. Tomorrow clean a bit more. Then a bit more. (At which point you’ll have to start from the beginning but that’s the Zen of house cleaning, as it were.) Want to be famous game designer? Start with learning programming or find a program to do it in. (Like I know. That’s not my area of expertise.) Want to have a paying you tube channel? Put up three videos. Want a blog with high traffic? Write a post every day. Send the more interesting ones to your friend who posts at the giant aggregator blog. Want to write a novel? Write a page. Want a better job? Think what your ideal job would be, then what you need to get there. And then take a step: write resume tilted at it; take that online certification; sign up for — groan — that college class. Take one step.

Now, that last one? If you’re going to do the immense job, to walk those thousand steps one step at a time, make sure it’s something you desperately want. It helps. It helps because the progress motivates you.

And here we hit the other thing. It’s recently come to my attention that we and people like us will do a lot of stupid work, a lot of ridiculous things that don’t pay anyway, or that eat away at our soul, instead of reaching for that thing we really, really want; for that secret desire of our hearts.

I’ve known Odds who have some amazing, OBVIOUSLY outsized talent: painting pictures, or making amazing clothes, or creating moving music, or, yes, telling stories. But they never do. Even though it’s obviously what they are happy doing. Instead they work an endless stream of soul-eating jobs, many of which are also extremely low pay. Why?

Ah. Well, when I was doing it — and ooh, boy, I have that T-shirt. Bought multiple times, because I loved it so much. (Though in my case the “outsized talent” is meh, but I have something I use instead of and it serves my simple needs.) — I kept getting told I had a fear of success. Which normally caused me to snort-giggle or something ruder. I would like to point out not only do I emphatically NOT have a fear of success, I don’t understand anyone having such an odd animal. What I DO have is a panic fear of failure.

This is very useful when it causes me to, say, scramble madly to remain published after my first series “failed” and I was told I’d never work in this town again. Scrambling madly kept me published for over twenty years and arguably ensured more success than that enjoyed by people with actual outsized talent.

It is, however, what causes the syndrome above. Because, you know, if I fail as a translator, or as a retail worker, or an office worker, or even as a housewife, well, that’s fine. I can fail at those. It was not what I wanted. It was not heart’s blood. Losing it didn’t MATTER. Meanwhile my precious was safe, because I wasn’t acting on it, or not really. This was at first with writing, and then with writing WHAT I REALLY WANTED TO. (Which required me to go indie, but I had the keys to do it since 2011, so why only last year? Because if it failed it would break me, that’s why.)

And that’s what I see in a lot of people.

… Except the precious isn’t safe, because over the years of not doing it, your inner self becomes frustrated and embittered. You fail by never doing it more certainly than if you did it. Jordan Peterson says if you’re a creative who doesn’t create you start dying. Psychologically, first, but eventually physically. He’s right there. But he’s not right ENOUGH. It’s not just creatives. It’s everyone who has a secret need to do something, to succeed at something. You avoid it, and avoid it, and avoid it. And it turns sour and despairing in you, and you feel like a failure and it infects everything in your life, eventually.

Yes, I know it takes a lot of courage to do the thing you really want to do — arguably I’d never have managed it without the Chinchilla of Hope Brigade cheering me on all the way and telling me to keep going, it wasn’t horrible (Which is why they’re thanked in the opening to No Man’s Land) — courage and persistence and a lot of steps. Make your gut into a new heart and take a step. If the secret desire of your heart is neither illegal or immoral, you should still do it. The alternative is slow suicide with steps.

Find or create a cheering section and take a step. (Lord, if you have to use an LLM. Heaven knows they’re fawning and servile enough. I want one with the personality of Mycroft in TMIAHM.) Just one step. Then another.

As Jordan Peterson also says, if you’re so broken, so HUMAN that all you can do is a small, irrelevant first step (the one he gave for cleaning your room was just opening your closet and looking at it. Just looking.) do that, then reward yourself for it. And tomorrow do a little more.

Because there’s really no alternative, if you want to do something that much. It’s that or death.

I can’t promise you success. There is no way to guarantee that, particularly if your desire is to do something artistic. And I sympathize with your need for safety and certainty.

If I were a super-hero, I’d be “Security Girl” because that’s what I crave.

And yet, here is a paradox: Every time I’ve done the sane and secure thing: buy the smaller house, get the day job, take the agent lower on the vine, because (theoretically) she’ll have more time for me, stay with trad pub– EVERY TIME I do that it blows up in my face, sometimes spectacularly.

On the other hand, if I ignore caution and safety and — against my best judgement — do the thing I really want to do no matter how crazy: if I buy the big, impractical Victorian in bad shape, with the understanding I’ll have to build it while living in it and doing everything else too; if I move across the country (of across the ocean) without ever having seen the place I’m moving to, and with nothing but a vague idea that’s where want to go; if I finally go indie and do what I want to?

It always turns out well. Every single time. And no, I don’t think that’s just me.

I think the effect is when you jump off the edge, and are trying to fly, you are scared enough to do everything you can. And then you actually fly. (This is a metaphor. Don’t do that in real life. Please. Unless you’re a bird. Then you can do it. But birds don’t read blogs, so you should see someone for that delusion.)

So go on. TRY IT. Avoiding it just guarantees failure. And bitterness. And death or something like.

So. Go on. Take a step. You know you have to.

67 thoughts on “Go on, Take a step”

  2. current goal is to get self-loan paid off, to avoid the tax penalties if this place gets me mad enough to just walk out. Today is the first time in years I’ve been ahead on time for the job I am doing. In part due to helper doing part of the job, but it started out with the machine malfunctioning, several attempts to get it to work, finally getting it operable, then getting it to do the job correctly(new product, so settings needed to be explored)

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    1. Well, I did need this, but it’s making me face some uncomfortable truths.

      For the next few,weeks, my ability to follow through with that BIG dream is limited by my current situation (family member in hospice, very near the end). I’m spending a lot of time visiting, dealing with his financials, and not sleeping very well.

      However, I CAN do something about the deplorable state of my house. I can set a daily goal for getting rid of clutter.

      Once the hospice care ends, and the funeral stuff is over, I can get going with that important goal. And, because the house should be clearer, the process should be easier.

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      1. Many hugs, and I’m sorry about your family member!

        But yeah, the best start is a little bit. My house is a disaster, but I got the living room clean and my bedroom dusted, and then I got the bathroom sink cleaned. It’s not much, but it’s a step in the right direction!!

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  4. I’ve done that: I started writing for Substack in January. Not a financial goal but an intellectual one: Writing about things that interest me (philosophy, political theory, and literature, primarily). I’m still figuring out how things work, but I went ahead and made a start.

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  5. I had a phrase for this in my business life. I called it Crisis Design Engineering. Basically it says, create the inevitable crisis early, so failure is not so catastrophic that it can’t be fixed. I describe it in more depth in my book A Geek’s Progress.

    If I’m ever famous enough to warrant a speech, it will probably be on the theme of, “Saying the inappropriate things that everyone else is thinking but afraid to say at the appropriate times.” Basically I’ve always stumbled through life doing stupid stuff because I was too dumb not to show how dumb I am.

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  6. This is fantastic advice and it’s what I need to hear given my current situation.

    And I can put it to use…

    …assuming I can ever figure out what my outsize talent or my lifelong goal *IS*. I don’t seem to have one. Sometimes I wonder if I’ve gone beyond the point of remembering what mine is or was and have lost the handle on it forever.

    If I can figure out where I want to go, then I can start taking steps. But if I step blindly without a destination in mind, then I may end up further away than I started. Does that make any sense?

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    1. If you’re having trouble figuring it out, don’t worry about it. Work on the small things you can see at hand. See what brings you joy and what doesn’t; maximize the former and minimize the latter.

      Your outsized talent might be for something seemingly mundane. Like creating procedural documents that are flawless, or knowing how to decorate a room so it’s both beautiful and comfortable. It may not be something you have to travel far to get to.

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      1. Second this, as I’m in that boat.

        Keep moving, there’s not a wrong direction if you don’t like where you are.

        “But what if I don’t like where I end up?” Return to step one, keep moving.

        This doesn’t mean you can’t exercise good judgement and stay out of minefields. But, keep moving – change will bring new perspective and opportunities.

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    2. I don’t know about outsized talent, but I do have *a* talent (for writing, which I mostly use in my day job). Currently very satisfied with my job. I genuinely enjoy doing something I’m very good at, and am getting paid very well as far as writing jobs go.

      Six years ago that was not the case. My job — also a writing job — was a dead end and had been one for years. Although the people I worked with directly were decent enough, and also good at their jobs, I had been underpaid for years, was struggling to keep up with bills, and the environment in which we worked was…well, I was working in higher-ed, which is to say it was actively hostile to almost everything I believe and care about. I would’ve taken *anything* that’d get me out, except that there were few jobs in the area that paid enough to keep body and soul together.

      Anyway, I guess this is a roundabout way of saying that, regarding worries about taking a wrong step, it depends on what your current situation is. If it’s mostly okay, and changing things could take you in a wrong direction, then take some time and consider carefully. BUT if your situation is like mine was, and your soul and self-worth are being steadily eaten away, there probably is no wrong step, as long as it isn’t further into what’s already killing you.

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    1. I was almost 60 when I started writing. I’d daydreamed about writing forever, but never took that first big step. And you know what? I didn’t have much to write about at 20. I hadn’t learned enough, or lived enough. Now, at 60-mumble, I have somewhat the opposite problem — sorting through all those thoughts to find the right ones to put on the screen.

      One thing I did discover: the only way to learn to write is to write. Put your thoughts into words. Your first attempts probably won’t be very good, but keep at it. You will get better with practice. Other than that, I can only repeat Robert A. Heinlein’s advice: Tell the story. Tell it in whatever words sound right to you. You can’t know what your hypothetical readers want, so write what you want to read. You can’t be weird enough that nobody else will like it. 😛

      If you want, check me out on FanFiction:

      https://www.fanfiction.net/u/8057193/Imaginos1892

      I put some of my thoughts on writing in my Profile page. Maybe they will help.

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    2. I wasn’t quite there in terms of age, but I decided that colleagues liked my stories, and mil-sci-fi was in, so why not? Little did I know that writing, publishing, and collecting fans was addictive!

      Now? I need to be sure I don’t get into a writing rut. I’ve gotten comfortable. That means I need to read more, write different things, and get back to learning.

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    3. In 25 days, I’ll be 75. I’ve wanted to write since I read my first book, around 5 years old.

      As long as you have breath, and can string a few thought together, its NEVER too late.

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  8. This feels like it could have been written directly for me. I took Sarah’s advice and the screaming desire in my heart and finally decided to work like a dog at writing and storytelling (video). I listen to encouraging audio that keeps me focused and away from all the old rules that I suffered under my whole life.

    Rush Limbaugh used to tell us to follow our hearts, and that it would work out.

    True, and scary.

    Great post, I feel like I could jump off the cliff and fly. Figuratively!

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  9. And people made fun of the Nike slogan…

    Long, long ago, when I was younger, but just as foolish, my wife and I decided to move to CH without jobs and attend the University. I eventually finished the ETH, but now I look back and wonder “What were you thinking?” It changed my life a lot. I took that first step, just like you, it was a big one!

    Well done Sarah!

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  10. As I am in the opening phases of my 7th “layoff” since 2009, I am needing to “take a step”. Or three.

    Now it always hurts not to be chosen as the star pupil, employee of the month, or whatever; but one gets over that.

    The hard part is deciding what you can still afford until the next paycheck arrives.

    By the grace of God, there are savings (this time!), so it’s no Birkenhead Drill; but it’s not on my timing.

    still, I might be able to finish my new Quade! Series and come up with something that outsells my textbooks…

    if we ever meet in person, I would love to talk about it. And I will buy the coffee (or other seasonally-appropriate beverages).

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  11. Part of the problem is so many people have no idea what they want. Or they want so many things and have no idea what priority they want them in. It’s like walking into the library to pick up a specific book you need, and reading 6 others while you find you forgot why you came there in the first place and wasted 6 to 12 hours in the process.

    So many improvement courses, like the 7 Habits of Successful People one, start out with having people list all the things they want from life, and then rank order them just to give them a starting point for when they tell you to put first things first.

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    1. Just beware of open-ended wishes. Back in the early 1980s, an NBA player prayed to G-d to make him famous. He went onto the court with his pants on backwards. Oops. At the post-game press conference, he said, “G-d answers prayers. Next time I’ll be more specific!”

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  12. Julia Cameron in “The Artists Way” says that if you leap a net will appear. God (or the Universe) will help creatives if they only have some faith. I quit a very lucrative job when I turned 60 to become a full time wet plate collodion photographer. I love Victorian era art and wanted to spend my remaining energies making art instead of making money for a billionaire. And God, or the Great Pumpkin, is taking care of me! Somehow my bank account has money, I am finding customers and having the time of my life doing 1850’s photography…

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    1. Any market for such around my fellow participants in Cowboy Action Shooting?

      The reenactors of the (unmentionable here) War / “Late unpleasantness” also seem like natural customers.

      Who else buys the old style pictures?

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  13. “Then you can do it. But birds don’t read blogs, so you should see someone for that delusion.”

    Well, I would, but we need the eggs.

    V/R William Lehman ________________________________

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  14. So what I’m hearing is, we lazy writers need to put butt in seat and digits on keyboards and actually write the flaming thing?

    Crazy talk. Pure lunacy. But, by gum, it might- might, I say!- just work.

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      1. I didn’t start out being a programmer either. In fact throughout winter term ’76, if anyone had told me my future was to be a programmer (a good programmer), not only I, but the professor and TA’s would have been ROFLOL, gasping for breath. In addition, I’d have said “not a chance in heck (H***)”. Let’s just say that the ’76 intro to computers using the teletype on the mainframe was not fun. Yes, typing in general was part of the problem. Flowcharts made absolutely no sense. (Also why when I started tutoring, I could make flowcharts make sense, because I had struggled.)

        I did say that, politely in ’83 when it was suggested by the advisor when I went in to discuss what was needed to change to a bookkeeping/accounting from timber. By then even the intro to computer class was required to start in the accounting (so was the accounting series). What I found was accounting was as easy as I thought it was (it’s basic math; even finding errors, accidental or not, is easy, that is patterns and receipts). But programming was also easy (patterns), and it was fun and challenging.

        There are more than a few people we knew back then that are shocked (it is fun to do too) when they are told “I’ve been writing (now wrote) software, for the last 30+ years.” Hubby is particularly fond of pulling that stunt.

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  17. On the news, Trump and some Republicans call the Democrats ‘crazy’. I guess, they’re afraid to call them evil? The Democrats showed that they hate America and Americans because we elected Donald Trump. Apparently the only country the Democrats ever loved was the Confederacy. For them, the Civil War never ended.
    ———————————
    “A committee is a life-form with a dozen mouths, a dozen stomachs, and no brain.”

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  18. 20-plus years ago a woman wanted to start a tax business in a small town. Then her partner got pregnant and dropped out. So she needed someone with $8000 to become her new partner. My beloved needed a job, and we could scrape up the money, so…..

    He didn’t payed for a full year’s work, until year 3. But it all worked out very well, in the end.

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    1. See, this paragraph right here is why I wish people would pick a different word than “partner” to mean “person who would be my spouse if I were married to them, but I don’t like the term boyfriend/girlfriend so I want something that sounds more mature”. Because that word already had a meaning, business partner, which is what was meant in that paragraph. But I read it twice with the concept of “domestic partner” in my head, since that’s the meaning it carried in what I read most recently. It wasn’t until the third read-through that I figured out it was the woman’s business partner who got pregnant and dropped out of the partnership.

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  20. For me it doesn’t seem to matter what I create as long as I can create something besides paperwork and meeting notes.

    But I have been wishing I could write good fiction, alas, so far my attempts go nowhere or feel heavily derivative. But maybe I should try again.

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  21. Current goals-

    *Get my A1C down
    *Lose weight
    *Not get caught cheating in the process of getting my A1C down and losing weight
    *Getting back to writing
    *Get something PUBLISHED this year
    *Much more exercise
    *Romance? In California? Maybe…
    *Save money for the next Japan trip, solo

    The issues are big, but I keep figuring out ways to do things so that I can get a step further along in the process.

    …damn it, I want a cookie.

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    1. “*Not get caught cheating in the process of getting my A1C down and losing weight”

      Good news and bad news: Cheating isn’t possible, but failure is. You either do something that works or you don’t, and the doing of whatever it is never stops. And the whatever-it-is you need to do can change under you even when what you’ve been doing was working fine.

      So…good luck. (Sincere wish from somebody who’s had reasonable success at part 1 of that goal in the last couple-three years and none in part 2.)

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      1. My A1C is fine (-ish, depending on who says what level is diabetic); 5.6, last three tests (before that 5.4, and 5.8).

        My problem is hypoglycemia. I can be being good, staying away from the usual suspects that trigger it (it is possible to trigger hypoglycemia, unfortunately). Only to have something that normally doesn’t trigger it, trigger it. Glucose tabs, etc., is not the solution to treating it. That will just trigger a blood glucose rollercoaster storm.

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  23. Gorton and Denton results are in.

    Labour was outscored by reform. Per BBC, 25% to 29%.

    Greens took the seat, with 41%.

    The Monster Raving Loonies also did a little better, quadrupling their vote from under forty to under 160.

    But, the top five candidates had over five hundred.

    The top three were 15k, 10.5k (reform), and 9.3k (labour).

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    1. almost exactly matches the demographics of the district. ITs about 45% Pakistani. They are the vast majority of green voters now, it’s rich crazy white women and Pakistanis voting as a block. THe British political class, particularly Labour, have really scr-wed themselves over. IF it wasn’t so tragic, I’d laugh,

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      1. Alas, I see no real hope to avoid “The Caliphate of Albion”. There may be a reconquest, but I think it will take experiencing Caliphate to get the locals to throw off their new overlords.

        Amusingly, it might be the Scotts or Irish who do so.

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        1. “might be”

          –

          ????

          Try “will be”. Of course maybe all the stubborn Scotts and Irish decamped for the US over the last few centuries, leaving behind those with no spine. But I doubt it.

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  24. My Phrase of the Year is “Start It”.
    Found a quote by Twain today (Mark not Shania):

    The secret of getting ahead is getting started.

    It went well with my Phrase. And now Sarah is piling on, so, along with it being the year of the Fire Horse – which is momentum and passion, I guess I’m on the right track.

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  26. We can’t fly ? You haven’t experienced a sufficiently healthy vertical wind tunnel. There was one on our first Royal Caribbean cruise (to Hawaii) and now I can say I have ‘flown’, so long as ‘being held up from the ground (heavy screen) by the air’ counts. I found it mostly enjoyable, but not quite so much that I now want to jump out of a perfectly good airplane, or put on a special suit and jump off a really high cliff. (OK, I SORT of want to do the latter, but lack the money and youth to seriously consider taking THAT step) But the original point; if you REALLY want to try that ‘sort of’ flying, those iFly facilities might be worth a try for you. And might even count as a ‘first step’.

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  27. This. Not writing, but taking care of others. At 51 I became a CNA, at 52 an LPN, and at 58 a Registered Nurse.

    I read somewhere, “Take the first step even if you cannot see the whole staircase.”

    Without the first step, I would still be 58 and not an RN.

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