A Thank You Note to Jeff Goins

If you didn’t notice, take a second and look when my last blog article was written.

That’s right, April 13th.

I’ve been blogging on and off since about 2004, so I’m definitely no stranger to the game. On this particular blog, I launched in January after exporting over from another blog. When I launched I hit the ground like a hurricane and was publishing a regular 4 times a week or so.

Then, I ran smack dab into a wall.

And you can see it coming too. My last post is about “Managing Personal Social Media Burnout.” Funny looking back now.

Over these last few months, I’ve figured something out though.

I Wasn’t Burnt Out

I live to write. I’m a songwriter and indie music biz blogger by original trade, but I’ve been writing short stories and other little quips since I was in the 2nd grade. As I’ve grown into adult-hood, I’ve parlayed some of that into writing to extend my personal brand and all that jazz. And I still really love it.

But, for whatever reason, I started to lose my confidence. And no confidence means you get scared.

When you get scared you don’t ship. Or pull the trigger. Or publish. Whatever you want to call it.

In other words, what I thought was burn-out was really fear.

You Are A Writer

I’ve been following Jeff for awhile. His articles have always been great, but something about the title of “You Are A Writer (So Start Acting Like One)” really struck me. For once I wasn’t feeling all jaded, pissed off, and scared. It was like my guard was down just enough for Jeff’s ebook to make it over the transom.

And it did. And once I started reading I devoured the hell out of it.

Almost immediately I wanted to start writing again. But, I didn’t. Initially, I held back on purpose. I wanted to harness that inspiration and explore it. Find out really where it was coming from. Turns out, it had been in there all along. Masked by the fear.

Sounds cliche, right?

Dude loses his confidence, stops doing what he loves, finds and inspirational book and gets back in the game.

Sure. But it goes deeper than that. I was reminded of a couple very important things.

• Consistency is key. In my life, I’ve been known as a work horse. From my days playing basketball to being a full-time musician, I got there by putting in the work. But, I put in bouts of feverish work. Bursts that counted as good hard work, but weren’t necessarily always consistent. Jeff’s book reminded me that, for better or worse, you have to get out and till that garden. Consistently.
• Just because I’m not hitting publish doesn’t mean I can’t write. I was literally in a spot where, because I didn’t feel like publishing on my blog, I didn’t think I could write. Hell, I’ve written 17 articles since reading Jeff’s book and I haven’t published one of them. They’re all sitting right here in my Evernote account. Not one has been published (yet).
• Fear can masquerade as a million different things. Its main tactic is to use others as a scapegoat so that is isn’t immediately called out as being to blame. When this all started, I had used at least five excuses for why I wasn’t writing. All of them tactics by fear to keep me from being honest with myself about the fact that I was scared.

This Is A Book For Everyone

Jeff might wince at that heading above because, well, it is terribly cliche-ish.

When I say a “book for everyone” I do sort of mean that everyone should write. However, what I really mean is, the advice and the personal stories in Jeff’s book go far beyond writing.

You can literally replace the word “writer” with “musician” or “entrepreneur” and get the same inspiring effect.

Go here right now and pick it up. You won’t be sorry and how in the hell can you go wrong at only $3.99. I promise, it’s worth ten times that amount.

Thanks Jeff. I’m going to go hit publish on my first post in almost 3 months.

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Find Jeff on twitter here and subscribe to his wonderful blog here.

[photo credit: goinswriter.com]