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Writing Life Lessons: The Biggest Thing I Learned Last Year
This month’s Word Carnival topic is a doozy — it’s ‘the biggest thing I learned last year’. Can you imagine how challenging it is for a polymath like myself to pick just one big thing I learned in the last 12 months? Often for me, learning is incremental — made up of a series of small steps rather than a single aha moment. That means that I learned a whole bunch of things last year.
For example, I learned:
that sometimes it’s just not worth the time and effort to chase a defaulting client and that you should stick to your principles all the same (which is why no-one knows her name though I’d warn someone off if they asked me privately — we writers have to stick together).
that even clients who pay well and with whom you have a great relationship can disappear overnight and it might have nothing to do with you. That’s sometimes what happens when you work with a firm that relies on external funding.
that just because you haven’t heard from a client for a while, it doesn’t mean they hate you. They might be going through a rough time and will come back when they have funds — as two of mine did.
that in most cases, not burning your bridges can bring new opportunities.
that friends can be good clients too.
that being on video won’t kill me — and I can do audio too.
that people operate on different time frames so it can take six months for a project that seemed urgent to the client (when they asked for your quote) to actually happen.
that I have some great, supportive friends — online and offline — and I’m grateful for them.
that trying to do everything is a fast ticket to burnout — sometimes you have to choose.
that you should never let anyone else define you — know what you stand for and make sure everyone else does too.
that if you keep doing what you do best, enough people will recognize it for you to get the appropriate reward.
that there are some aspects of writing I absolutely love (like blogging) and others I don’t love as much as I thought I would — but that’s OK.
that it’s important to keep a positive attitude and have a plan, but to allow for the plan to change.
that there’s nothing more important to me than a happy family life — and everything else serves that.
All of those were great learning experiences, and I’m grateful for them, but none of them is the biggest thing I learned last year. What I learned — or relearned — last year was that when I’m knocked down, I get up again and keep going. I’m resilient and determined, that doesn’t mean I can’t be a nice person too. What’s the biggest thing you learned last year?