Opportunities Everywhere

The last few years I worked in restaurants, I noticed something unusual had begun to happen. I’d become interested in a few teachers and how their work overlapped with the challenges writers faced both at the page and with publication. It seemed more useful to me than all the books and articles on craft you could read. I found myself thinking about how my focus and my attention and my beliefs affected my everyday life the way my focus determined the kind of stories I told when I wrote.

About this same time a few waiters started asking for my advice about this and that. One, Tim, was starting his own online business. He was very excited about it, but it was a slow grow. He wanted out of the restaurants as much as I did, and he was often impatient. So, I counseled him on the power and importance of patience, of trusting what he was creating. I just thought of his business like a book he was writing, and I could easily access a wisdom I rarely offered myself.

I was coaching him, and I loved it. I learned what I was coaching as I counseled. He also seemed to appreciate the encouragement and reassurance. It was, I felt, a win-win. We would eventually both leave the restaurant, he to grow his business fulltime, and me to write and, by and by, coach and teach. But I often find myself thinking of Tim when I’m a little low about my life, feeling as if nothing is happening, that the source of opportunity has for some cruel reason dried up.

Working as a waiter in a steakhouse does not seem like a font of opportunity for a man like me as much as, say, attending a writer’s conference. And yet even in a place that seemed barren, a place built for brutish and dull survival, that offered only a chance to earn cash to feed and house myself, there grew that flower calling for my attention. I could have ignored it, but it was too appealing. Tim taught me that I loved helping people. Likewise, Tim has since shared with me that when he’s feeling uncertain, he remembers what we talked about. He could have bought a book or attended a seminar, of course, but he could also find the help he needed from the guy next to him.

Check out Fearless Writing with Bill Kenower on YouTube or your favorite podcast app.

Everyone Has What It Takes: A Writer’s Guide to the End of Self-Doubt
You can find William at: williamkenower.com