On Getting Stuck

I got stuck.

Oh, I have other excuses. Good ones, too. I got busy with work (the paying kind). The lease on our house ended and we had to find a new place and move. Life got busy.

But those are not the real reasons I haven’t written since April. What really happened is that I got stuck. I couldn’t figure out where the blog was supposed to go. I wanted it to have a grander purpose, a goal, preferably one that would pay off and be a huge success in the long run. Even though I’ve written about how goals can be paralyzing, which I found is not at all a popular sentiment in our goal-obsessed culture.

And there was the rub. By putting the pressure on to make the blog into something “viable”, I immediately caused it to grind to a halt. Killed off all attempts at creativity. I couldn’t think what to do next. So I did nothing.

But I’m a big believer in signs. And this week, I got an email from a friend who subscribed to the blog and who has even taken the trouble to comment several times. “Is it really true you stopped writing?” she wondered. I felt a guilty pang.

Then, a fellow blogger, Jennifer Gresham, author of the Everyday Bright blog, quoted one of my posts, and sent a tweet asking if I was still writing. Reading her blog, which referenced one of my own favorite posts about the famous animal advocate and author Temple Grandin, I realized how much I’ve missed writing, and getting feedback from the little community, however small, that had started to form.

I also realized that I no longer care anymore if the blog becomes a “thing”. This didn’t happen because I had a major breakthrough. In fact, it sort of happened by accident. In my last post, I set out some goals for myself:

Become a professional dog trainer.
Learn the art of natural horsemanship.

I’m happy to say that I’ve been deliciously busy doing both. As tends to happen once you finally decide, my new direction is quickly gaining steam. The move turned out to be fortuitous – our new neighborhood is very dog-friendly, and the house we’re now renting is across the street from a park where the neighbors all bring their dogs to socialize. One day, a neighbor asked me how I got to get my dogs to respond so well, and at that moment, I decided to take the plunge.

“I’m a dog trainer,” I said, trying my best to sound briskly professional.  She hired me on the spot.

Now, lest you think I’m passing myself off as something I’m not, I’ve been studying dog training and working with dogs for years. I’ve been planning to take this step, reading books, taking classes, and volunteering at shelters. I just never had the confidence to take that next step and call myself a trainer. But I realized then and there that the universe had handed me a moment.

I ran home, put up a web site, printed up some business cards, and The Dog Mentor was born. Since then, I’ve been hired by several clients in the new neighborhood to train their dogs. And I am head over heels in love with this work, which doesn’t feel at all like work.

I always thought those people who said “I’d do this for free” about their jobs were nuts. Money has always been a big issue for me. Now, I think I am beginning to understand what they mean. I absolutely love doing this, and I’d do it whether I got paid for it or not.

I’ve been having so much fun, I stopped worrying about where to take Serial Reinvention, and what it will ultimately become. And once I took the pressure off, I found myself wanting to return to it.

So here I am. If you’re reading this, thanks for being patient. I hope to start posting regularly again, whatever that means. But this time, I’m doing it just for fun. The topics will probably wander, but will always center around the Serial Reinvention theme. Because I know there are people out there like me who are struggling, people who need to know that seeking out new directions doesn’t make you a flake. It doesn’t make you unreliable. Or even all that odd.

It just makes you human.