Helpers

The first client I almost worked with contacted me via my website and said she was looking for help finding her motivation to write. I said I could definitely help her with that even though I had never formally helped anyone with anything. I agreed to meet her at a Starbucks nearby where I could explain what it is I did. This gave me time to figure what precisely that was, something I was still working on during my drive to our meeting.

She was a happy soldier of a woman, a few decades older than I, but uncertain if she wanted to spend the last third of her life writing if she wasn’t any good at it. “You’d have to be honest with me,” she said. I told her I absolutely would be. “I can take it,” she said. I said I believed her. Then she leaned over our table fixed me with a look. “What do you write, by the way?”

“These days I’m mostly writing about writing.”

“Oh, how boring.”

We didn’t end up working together, though not because she thought writing about writing was boring. I believe she wanted a taskmaster, which I’m not. Though I didn’t really know this at the time. All I knew was you should not be asking anyone to tell you whether you’re good at anything. I didn’t know why you shouldn’t be asking that, I just knew you shouldn’t.

So, I wrote about it, wrote about how you should only be asking yourself if you’re interested in what you’re doing, not whether what you’re doing is interesting to anyone, because whether anyone else is interested can’t change the fact that you’re interested. I hadn’t understood this until I wrote it. It’s one thing to know something, and another to know something and be able to share it with someone. I don’t feel like I really know something until I’ve written it, until I can share it.

It’s still a little mysterious to me why that’s the case, why teaching teaches the teacher, but I’m comfortable for now with that mystery. For now, it’s enough to know that it works. I like to think the stuff I’ve shared that helped me has helped other people, but I never know for sure. We get to thank only a fraction of people who have helped us. After all, I never got to thank that woman for helping me as she did, though I feel confident she’s gone on to help lots of other people, whether she knew was helping or not.

If you like the ideas and perspectives expressed here, feel free to contact me about individual coaching and group workshops.

Fearless Writing: How to Create Boldly and Write With Confidence.
You can find William at: williamkenower.com