Being yourself online can be the strangest experience. (In addition to, you know, the basic essential weirdness of being a human being.)

Sometimes you want to dip your toe in a certain water without making it a big deal or announcing anything. And then it can feel oddly disingenuous to not share everything with everyone.

I open my mouth sit down to write, but nothing comes out.
So then you just don’t talk at all, because hello, all of your brain matter is occupied by this one thing. Feels a bit like being told something about someone and sworn to secrecy. And before you’ve even absorbed the information, he walks up and you get all blurtey and act like a total dooooofus.

Must have happened umpteen times on Seinfeld: Jerry tells Elaine a secret about George, and then she gets all mumbley and super suspicious. Until George gets her wasted and she spills everything.

A glimpse at the flip side.
Sometimes I feel awkward as a reader/consumer when someone hints at something they’re growing in the background. But now as a writer/producer I completely get it. Because you have this thing you want to talk about, but you also feel a bit protective, and you need to wait until the timing feels right.

Must be a bit like couples feel about telling people (or not) that they’re pregnant?

Nurturing something tiny and sweet is a vulnerable and delicate time. It might start out as just a private glimmer of an idea, a flutter across the screen. And at that point everything is so fragile. You need time to get used to the change. And it needs time to put down some roots and get stronger.

The baby point.
And there’s no reason that setting the stage for a new business venture or product has to be icky or manipulative anymore than it would be with a (real life) baby. Because your business can be your baby. Your next idea can be a tiny, sweet thing.

No one would be like: Oh, gross, she totally hinted at being pregnant – she must be pushing her baby on me. Dude, I don’t want your baby!

So why does it sometimes feel that way when someone hints about their next thing?

It’s like you I want to share a little bit, but you’re I’m scared that it will look like priming the pump or something. (Which in this case is extra ridiculous because part of my thing is for such a teeny handful of people that it would be impossible to game anyone.)

The bigger point?
Part of being yourself online (without wanting to stab yourself in the eye repeatedly) has to do with sharing what you can, being all you in a way that feels genuine and safe.

And if you can’t share everything rightthissecond, it doesn’t mean you’re withholding to be manipulative. And you definitely don’t want to over-share in the name of “authenticity”.

I guess this is me saying that I’m doing some stuff. That I’m crazy excited about. And I’ll be ready to share soon. Then, hopefully, I can stop being quite so super awkward and blurtey.

How about you? Do secrets make you clumsy? Even the exciting ones?

I read Daniel Coyle’s The Talent Code the first week of 2010, and I still think about the premise at least, oh, every single day. Hands down the most influential businessey read of my year.

Not to build it up or anything.

Premise: Remarkable talent is possible for all of us. That means you. And me. Seriously. Genius isn’t native or innate, but instead within our reach. We can develop talent through deep practice.

Deep practice is a specific way of engagement — a method of concentration and effort in which you’re intensely focused on doing something as perfectly as possible in order to create pathways in your brain that favor exquisitely crafted skill, and eventually grow talent.

Of course it’s inspiring to learn that, if we’re willing to put in time and effort, it’s possible to become incredibly talented at something that we’re passionate about.

But more important for my own spark of inspiration is the knowledge that deep practice involves dwelling at your edge. Attaining mastery requires concentrating intently on your mistakes in order to adjust course. Focusing on flaws is (for me at least) almost always inherently uncomfortable.

And that’s okay. The mistakes and accompanying discomfort are expected and required.

My perfectionistic self finds so much freedom in this understanding. What a lovely offering of permission — to really and truly bomb, fail, and suck throughout the creative process.

I think of all those writers who find the experience of writing to be excruciating, but still can’t stop themselves. That stinging discomfort mingled with satisfaction sings of deep practice.

And Coyle clearly illuminates this highly technical, biological process of talent acquisition without oversimplifying or sacrificing meaning. For example, by the end of the book you’re able to make sense of this oft-repeated phrase as if you were fluent in neuroscience-speak:

Skill is insulation (myelin) that wraps neural circuits and grows according to certain signals.

And, you will be psyched to get your myelin wrapping circuits like a Christmas-present-wrapping Elf on speed.

(As a Shiva Nata junkie, my mouth waters at all this talk of neural circuitry, at discovering further proof that our patterns are generously flexible, and the implications for changing habits.)

Coyle describes concrete, actionable steps in the acquisition of talent, and the conditions that allow greatness to thrive in talent hotbeds like Brazil for soccer players and Renaissance Italy for painters.

And he explains the process of ignition – how we’re sparked by motivation that makes us so hungry to master a skill that we’re willing to subject ourselves to this occasionally awkward deep practice.

And woven throughout the book are compelling stories of toil and triumph so inherently motivational that there’s no need for excess sentimentality – Coyle inspires without becoming gushy or annoying.

This book honestly makes you want to go out and suck at something. Something that, more than anything, you’re desperate to master.

Then, last night, I read this bit from Julia Child’s My Life In France, of her experience learning to cook:

Of course, I made many boo-boos. At first this broke my heart, but then I came to understand that learning how to fix one’s mistakes, or live with them, was an important part of becoming a cook. I was beginning to feel la cuisine bourgeoise in my hands, my stomach, my soul.

Spoken like a revelation: Deep practice, all the way.

Have you read anything fantastic lately? What can I add to my towering stack of books?

I think one of the surest ways to get super stuck in the pursuit of your thing is to say that the time and energy you’ve spent doing the not-thing was all for nothing.

And then get all mired in regret, pretty much the foreboding ingredient in brewing up some bitter funk, making it almost impossible to let go of the not-thing and clear the way for happier work.

If I call my last experience a big, fat, failing waste (just for example), then I’ll probably end up paralyzed with the fear of choosing “wrong“ again. (I’m not so sure you can ever choose “wrong.” But I am very sure it can feel that way.)

And after regret gets you all jammed up in the search for your perfect incarnation of work, you feel justified in refusing to choose anything until you’re eleventy thousand percent sure that this time it’s the bestest, most perfect Thing ever. Without risk or vulnerability or fear.

We’re going for fail proof, baby.

So now we’re only willing to consider ideas that are guaranteed to make us all fizzy with glee and enthusiasm. (Guaranteed, the Gods chuckle.)

Possible solutions? Well at some point you probably need a little bit of faith in order to take the next teeny, tiny step forward. But oof, at this point faith can be really hard to come by.

I usually have to do some reconnaissance work first, where I try to suss out some teeny, tiny reason why that the whole not-thing endeavor was maybe, possibly, not a completely wasted effort. For me it helps to tease some shred of worth out of the last experience in order to clear some room for the next one.

Because then, once you can find something palatable in the bitter brew, it’s much easier to entertain the possibility that maybe this is the exact spot you were supposed to arrive at all along.

The spot that will serve as a jumping off point for your next big thing.

Making it easier to see why the seemingly random skills and connections and insights you gathered while doing the wrong thing were absolutely necessary in order to find the next right thing. And then we can see the necessity of our meandering loop.

But, yeah, that recognition of serendipity always seems to come in hindsight. Oh, the glorious wisdom of hindsight. Kinda works like that funky regret, only all cleaned up and tied with a bow.

Have you made any sense of your meandering loop? Or are you one of those annoying lucky direct-route, knew-my-thing-from-the-get-go kind of people?

Right now I’m shifting a bunch of things related to my work, which basically means I’m back to hot pursuit of The Thing. Even more than usual. And the ideas I’m heading toward started bringing up all of these memories of (weird) things I liked doing as a kid. (Another dose of nostalgia.)

It’s reminding me of so much of the career advice, from Jung to Barbara Sher, for when you’re stuck in that I-have-no-freaking-clue-what-to-do place: Explore what you loved doing in childhood.

That childhood review never helped me. I was trying to be way too Sesame Street with my imaginings. I kept searching for memories that looked like a nine year-old version of me spinning around in a field of wildflowers and butterflies. (Idealistic, much?)

The things I spent time doing were simple, and they were so Me that they didn’t stand out in my memory at all. (Reminds me of some guidance I love from Gretchen Rubin: When you’re trying to figure out what to do, try focusing less on what you love to do and more on what you do do.)

Infuriating Funny, but I’ve only been able to recall things I enjoyed as a kid after the epiphanies about new directions, after taking tiny steps toward things I maybe possibly wanted to try.

Oh sure, in hindsight, my childhood experiences make perfect sense. Weird stuff, like:

In fourth grade, my best friend and I decided that what our class really needed was a trivia contest. (Nerd Alert.) So we created… SuperQuiz! And somehow convinced our teachers to let us organize this bizarre intellectual battle for nine year-olds. With trophies and everything!

(Most incredibly embarrassing question: What weighs more: A pound of sand, or a pound of water?)

Then we convinced our teachers that we desperately needed a talent show. Organized that, too.

Next, we created a summer camp for kids in our neighborhood. And convinced parents to pay us for subjecting their children to an off-key rendition of “Do your ears hang low?” OMG, I know.

So I was either fantastic at event planning, or freakishly persuasive in my youth. (And also, really precocious. Shudder.) And I loved setting the mood and scene for an experience. I still do.

But none of these memories evoke an obvious career. Instead they offer teeny tiny clues about what I like to do and who I like to be.

And there are times when all you can do is act as if an idea is the next right thing, and take a little step. It helps me to remember that there really isn’t just one thing. And that no matter what I do, I’m still me. (Well, sometimes that helps. Sometimes it’s totally exasperating.)

It’s looking like I’ll always be discovering my thing, and allowing it to keep doing its metamorphosis thing. Which is one of the reasons I’m super excited about Victoria Brouhard’s Shmorian Thing-Finding class next week. The evolution continues…

Curious… Did combing through childhood memories ever help you find clues about your thing?

Back from a long production shoot, and the subsequent recovery of getting Very Little Sleep. Which, being my achilles heel, usually leads to much fogginess and maybe a splattering of existential angst.

Anyway. Even though I’m always explaining the unglamorous nature of production assistanting, people still seem to get the wrong idea. So I thought I’d take this little chance to clear things up a bit.

The incomplete list of non-glittery things I’ve done:

1. Running to the airport morning, noon and night to scoop up our “Talent.” Being the girl holding the sign that reads “Mr. Person I’m Picking up”? Awkward.
2. Driving through a blizzard complete with 60 mph gusting wind to pick up nonfat plain yogurt with which to make a tasty par-freaking-fait for his holiness, the Grand Poobah Director.
   (Kidding, Sir. And I know that you know that I whip those treats up with love. Really.)
3. And don’t worry, I saved the best for last: Towing the port-a-potties. Plural, yes.
4. Wait: Also? Towing those disgusting things through winding mountain roads only for the wind to whip them clear off my truck. And then radioing to the crew: “I just lost the port-a-pots. Again.” You really can’t imagine the teasing that ensues from this testosterone-centric crew.

Does it sound like I’m complaining? Really, there are so many things to love about this gig. So. Much. Fun. It’s just… Feeling dazzlingly sophisticated (or even simply clean) isn’t part of the deal.

Along with waking up well before 4 am (!) and running ragged for 18 hours, there’s also plenty of good stuff. Like:

1. Watching the sun rise and set in some breathtakingly lovely locations.
2. Hanging out with the producer, one of my all-time favorite people: A cross between the funniest guy you’ve ever met, the coolest boss you’ve ever had, and the dad/brother/husband you always wanted. In a way that sounds way less creepy.
3. Bonding with the stylist and coordinator. As the complete female contingent on a crew of 40 — Epic conversations about work and life and love. And men.
4. All the other juicy bits I’m not privy to talk about. Stupid confidentiality, grumble, grumble.

I woke up this morning thinking about taking the leap, choosing your own adventure, answering your hero’s call. And that it isn’t supposed to be easy.

People say living from your heart and steering toward your best life feels like paddling downstream.

You get this image of leaning back on your raft with the sunshine on your skin and a serene smile on your face.

Oh, Sweetie. The truth is you can’t even climb into the boat the first few times without tipping it over and soaking yourself in freezing water.

And you forget that paddling downstream still involves paddling. And it requires using different muscles. Muscles you’ve never used before which means tearing down and rebuilding. Upheaval.

Your stream is probably flat in places, and then you have to paddle a lot. And it winds through a canyon where sometimes the walls are so steep, you can’t see anything around the next bend.

Your vision is totally limited to this one single stroke.

Oh, and there are rapids. And eddies and holes full full of fear and doubt and what-ifs. You have to keep paddling. And bail water when your boat fills up. And scout the terrain ahead.

And of course you knew all of this. You chose this route precisely because the landscape is rugged and pristine and freshly carved. Which equates to uncertainty and confusion and many wrong turns.

You don’t choose it because it’s easy. You choose it because you can’t not.

And so you say yes to your hero’s call and you leap into your saga. And you find yourself repeating the mantra of my teacher Martha Beck: This is a lot harder than I expected, and that’s okay.

A lot harder. And all worth it because you’re moving downstream, in the direction of your life. Your life. The one full of serendipity and freedom and growth. And possibly a sprinkle of bliss.

And you feel this incredible relief when you remember that it’s okay for things to be hard. You stop taking the challenge personally. You meet yourself where you are. You say yes to this moment.

Except once you allow it to be hard, then you enter into this twilight space. Where Hard and Easy pull some ridiculously impossible kung fu manuever and dress up in each other’s clothes.

Sure, the old you might think this is all a bit reckless. But the new you knows that there’s nothing harder than drowning in abandoned hopes or suffocating from lack of inspiration and possibility.

This is all exactly the kind of absurdly obvious epiphany I’m always having from Dance of Shiva.

The kind of truth you can read about and you can hear people you admire explain 793 times. But none of it matters until you hit that moment when your jaw drops and you suck in your breath.

OH! I get it.

And you try to explain it, but people just roll their eyes because you can never express the intensity of your new understanding with the corresponding eloquence. And so you just keep saying:

No, really. It’s supposed to be hard. And it’s all so perfect. And isn’t it absolutely glorious?

I’ve been obsessing thinking more about this check-y-loo habit. I’d love to bump creative time earlier and push checking e-mail and stuff later into the day. (Later than the second my eyes pop open.)

And I’m trying to be patient with myself. (Ow.) And curious.
The end of my corporate career was bad. Bad like Sunday night blues that start early Saturday afternoon. Bad like epic anxiety with occasional panic and tearful frustration thrown in for kicks.

Looking back now, I think it probably needed to get that bad in order for me to walk away. For a million reasons. Because change is scary. Because I was “successful”. Because I had a very specific, technical advanced degree only applicable to this one field. Because I was making a lot of money.

Because I didn’t really have a clear idea what I’d do next. Yeah, there was that.

At the end I was letting projects slip and letting people down. Including myself. Bleargh. But I couldn’t be bothered to do anything about the slipping and slacking. I was too busy panicking.

A pattern is born.
I used my Blackberry for an alarm clock. Cozy, right? Every morning my alarm would ring and before I brushed my teeth or wiped the sleep from eyes, I’d check my e-mail.

Really, I was checking to see exactly how awful the day ahead promised to be. I was checking to see if some partner was mad, waiting on me for something, or annoyed that I hadn’t gotten back to them.

I never checked my e-mail and then felt happy or grounded. Today’s going to be just fantastic! Pffft.

Even when my inbox was free of bombs, I didn’t feel any relief. Just a sense of borrowed time. If it wasn’t e-mail, it would be the ominous red light indicating voicemail. Or a file on my chair.

All just a bunch of symbols. Tell me inbox: How should I feel today? How will my day go?

And here we are.
Wouldn’t you know, the pattern stuck. Because it’s been more than a year, and I still want to check in with the outside world first thing in the morning.

And now, even though my inbox is a pretty jovial place, I sometimes find myself checking with a twinge of apprehension. Like there might be a shoe or a request I don’t want to honor. Or I really don’t know what. Something. Something that could wreck me with the anxiety of the old days.

And these days, my e-mail is more like a festival of fun. Whee! Notes from friends! Client appointments! Thoughtful blog comments! (Oh, love those!) But it doesn’t really matter what the content is. I still don’t like this impulse of first looking out there to see how I should feel in here.

Curious. And experimenting.
For me, just noticing what’s underneath this impulse is huge. And I think I could start a series on these former-career-related heebie-jeebie patterns and habits that are still lurking. Maybe I will.

Anyway, I’m curious… Anyone else have these lurker patterns? Or thoughts for unwinding them?

Our important, intrinsic, rock-star-worthy stuff isn’t always the stuff about us that Other People value. And this is kind of a big deal. It’s one of those difference makers between a super-happy-thriving life versus a mediocre, successful-on-someone-else’s-terms existence.

But you have to believe that you get to decide which elements of your fabulosity that you cultivate. (And hear this: You’ve got plenty to choose from.)

Remember that fateful ropes course?
Well that evening at dinner, we were all talking about our Kolbe Index. (Yep, discussing “conative action style” is just one of the many ways we coaches geek out together.) Anyway, my score is basically even, which is apparently really rare and somehow makes me the perfect employee.

And my teacher mentioned that the word amongst employers is this: If you ever run across someone with an even Kolbe, do not ask any further questions, just hire the person on the spot.

And I got all defiant. (In my head, of course. Wouldn’t want to make any waves or anything.)

Oh, so I’m the perfect employee, huh? Because why? Because I play well with others, follow directions, color inside the lines?

Yeah. Whoa.

And then today Seth Godin summed up part of my frustration brilliantly. (Redundant, yes.) 

Creativity is hard. Sure, the bursts of insight tingle. And the glee at expressing the truth that you didn’t even know you knew until you actually expressed it… bliss. Nothing beats dancing with the muse when things are just buzzing and skipping and flowing and jiving. But those delicious, zinging bursts are the reward for the much less exciting business of tinkering and toiling with your craft.

And that creativity requires curiosity. And patience. And when you’re really, really excitably curious it can be really, really hard to be patient. And frustrating. And brain-scrambling.

Oh and the Seth part: We don’t nurture creativity in kids (or employees). Because it’s easier for us if they just… well… play well with others, follow directions, color inside the lines.

And just to be clear, this isn’t me whining that some big, mean grown-up squelched my childlike curiosity. I am ridiculously curious. Sometimes annoyingly so. This is just me figuring out what that defiance was all about.

And realizing I need to spend some time exploring how to be my own best employee. And, erm, boss. Because sometimes the boss living inside my head is a wee bit harsh. And then I become the big, mean grown-up squelching any childlike curiosity. The curiosity that compels me to create.

Do you ever wish you weren’t so agreeable or employable? So good at playing the game? Or do you have any ideas for getting all rowdy and coloring outside the lines?

I’ve been thinking about my trajectory through the roles of Good Student, Model Employee, and All Around Team Player. And out of nowhere, Bam! Rookie Entrepreneur. Oh, the bumps in the road.

I had a pretty easy time with the transition from peppy, straight A student to highly-regarded, fast-track bound corporate employee. We’ve talked about my people-pleasing perfectionism, right? It appears that I have some kind of Good Girl complex.

Which has made the flip to running my own show… different. And I actually never imagined I’d be an entrepreneur. Maybe because I always performed so well in The System?

Which has me wondering: What if the things that made us successful students and employees run counter to the traits we need to be innovative, self-starters? What if the strengths our teachers and bosses praised us for turn into limitations when we venture out on our own?

Now for a story.
I was on a ropes course last week as part of a workshop. I climbed a (really tall) telephone pole and walked a tightrope holding onto a wire on either side of me. Blindfolded.

The event was the finale to an intense coach training I just finished, and the idea was to coach each other through any fear that came up. You know, in response to being freakishly high up in the air. Dangling by a rope. Blind.

Also to practice trusting someone else who would guide us through the process. In this respect, I totally scored. Everyone there was fantastic, yes. But I really fell for my coach, in a puppy-love, major girl-crush kind of way. (Note to self: Feeling *meh* after a lukewarm date or two? Might be time for something dangerous!)

That’s not the (only) weird part.
Something she said after my stint on the tightrope really hit me: She was kind of shocked by how receptive I was, how open to direction and guidance and feedback. She’d suggest that I shift my center of gravity slightly, and it was like she was holding puppet strings: I complied automatically.

I’m kind of fascinated by this observation. I thoroughly adore and admire her and I love that I was able to trust. Maybe I sensed intuitively that it was safe and productive for me to be super receptive.

But I’m also wondering whether all of this receptivity and adaptability might sometimes get in my way. Like when I impulsively look outside of myself for the right answer. Or when I have trouble trusting my own inner guidance. Which, uh, sucks happens sometimes.

If I have a point, this is it.
If we really want to discover and develop our thing, we need to understand the difference between the stuff about us that we like (strengths we actually want to cultivate) versus the stuff about us that they like (the traits other people peg as valuable). Crazy, but they’re not always one and the same.

I kind of have a lot more to say about this. For now though, I’m wondering… is the stuff that you like about yourself (call that stuff “strengths” if you want) the same as the stuff other people tend to appreciate about you? Or do you have any difference of opinion?

This whole notion of finding (and doing) your thing: I talk and write and think about it, oh… quite a bit. One of the elements of thing-finding that receives some pretty intense pondering on my part is any emphasis on the singularity of the thing.

So yeah, there isn’t just one thing.

I’m really sorry, but it has to be said. Because I don’t think it’s very helpful to seek out and chase some elusive discovery of just one thing. Especially when you’re doing something that definitely isn’t the thing and you have no idea what the thing is. Because, argh, the frustration.

Waiting for some definable purpose or career to suddenly flutter into your consciousness… Well, you might be waiting a long time. Because in my experience it doesn’t usually happen that way.

I know, this might sound like terrible news. Or maybe fantastic news? I tend to think both.

Terrible because, yeah, there’s a bit of a journey involved. (Oops, again, sorry. But the fact that there’s a journey involved is actually also fantastic. The terrible part comes in when you want an answer right-this-very-minute so that you can stop doing the not-thing.)

Fantastic because instead of helplessly waiting for an outside force to bestow upon you the knowledge of some fully-formed idea nugget of your perfect career/purpose/path, you can actually start taking your own steps along the journey. (Okay, the word journey is corny, but process is boring and insufficient.)

Also fantastic because the fact that there’s no one thing means you definitely haven’t missed the boat on finding it. Looking at it this way, lack of education or experience becomes kind of irrelevant. It’s not like you just get one chance to figure it out. Which means that bombing your MCATs or choosing the wrong major will someday seem like, well, no biggie.

And… there’s also sorta, kinda… just one thing. Maybe. For you.

It’s just that the one thing is never something straightforward like aeronautical engineer or fourth grade teacher. It might be something more like the undercurrent of curiosity that drives a former aeronautical engineer turned fourth grade teacher whose greatest thrill comes from getting nine year olds excited about science while raising his family on a working organic farm and training for triathlons in his spare time. To take a fairly simple example.

Former Catholic Monk turned psychotherapist/musicologist/teacher/writer Thomas Moore (no really, see?) writes about creating a life’s work by following the urge of your daimon:

A daimon is an unnamed urge that pushes you in a certain direction. It is the force behind the passion and tenacity of your yearning… It is a fertile idea; that the deep passion and drivenness that stays with us all our lives is there from the beginning. The daimon is a primal, creative urge. The daimonic voice is deep-seated and connected to your personality and destiny.

So maybe there isn’t one thing, but instead one primal, creative urge. And we can pick up a thread of it at any time, little by little, without knowing what the end result is going to look like.