The elevator pitch, with itch
small made thing #110
Hello beautiful human,
Last night I got to go out to dinner with old friends who were briefly in town, and a variety of their friends, some of whom I knew and some I didn’t. It was a crowded, rowdy, lovely table of artists, writers, musicians, and other thoughtful life-embracing folk. Imagine that table in Rent at the cafe, but everyone is 40 or more, Midwestern, and more or less sort of happy-ish. Because I haven’t seen these people in a year, or maybe because they see me in ways I don’t see myself, when we went around the table I was introduced as “a poet, a creativity coach, a model, a creative collaborator extraordinaire.”
Some of those hats I haven’t worn in a minute.
“What’s your elevator pitch for your creativity coaching?” someone asked.
Oh fizzle. I never liked elevator pitches and I was never very good at them. I was always so oriented towards meeting and matching the individual energy of the person that the work always felt new. I never knew how to encapsulate that magic in a cute little three minute spiel. I do something, I do it well, and I don’t know how to talk about it. It’s a kind of minor, slightly humorous curse.
Surprisingly, though, last night I did find words. They came right away.
“I believe in taking very small steps, making microshifts, really, starting where we are, as we are,” I told him. “A lot of people believe they could do the thing or make the thing if only…and they think they need to go on retreat to Bali or they should quit a job or build a studio in the back yard. Nothing is wrong with any of that, but we don’t need it. I like to work with my clients to look at their lives where they are, as they are, with gentle clarity. We find the small spaces, and make something happen. Then we make the next thing happen.”
“But there are a lot of various reasons people might not be doing the thing,” he said.
“Oh sure, absolutely. Blocks can be internal or external, or usually both,” I answered. “That’s why making such small movements is effective.”
He nodded, and we all went off to watch the sun set over Lake Mendota. La Vie Boheme in Wisconsin.
That’s the pretty picture version.
I admit it all felt a little itchy. Like trying on clothes from a few years ago. I have been each of those things and I believe in the work. It was a good life and a good vision but it was not supported and it proved not sustainable.
The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation, Thoreau told us, and I have been that quietly desperate person. I am not that now but I still don’t always know which way is forward. It seems to me the challenge is to be present and ask the right, very scary, questions. Which of those hats still fits? Which feels like me now? I have the privilege and opportunity to grow a life for myself starting over from more or less zero at age fifty…
And therein lies the paradox for me. As much as I believe in small shifts, sometimes everything moves suddenly, all at once. We’re flattened. It was an earthquake, a tsunami. Everything changed, everything broke apart, and I guess now, after the disaster, is when I can get back to my small step models. Piece by piece I can pick up the rubble and hold it up What was this thing? Did I like it? Do I still like it? Does it fit? I plant things in my yard. I write something or other in here every day as a practice and promise to myself.
And I have a client. She is working on her book. And we’re working together to keep her accountable to that work, in the middle of her busy, fulfilling life.