Optimism, my old friend

The difference this time is, I know anxiety will return, but I also know it will just be passing through. Two weeks into a couple of CBT workbooks and online programs, I can start to feel a little agency over my own thoughts again.

Sitting down at my desk yesterday, I felt something that’s been absent for too long: unfiltered optimism. I felt excited about my art and the possibilities it brings to my life. I felt cautiously confident in the growth of my coaching practice. I even bought a ‘personal life’ notebook to get myself better organised.

Getting organised, having failed to find a system for the last 17 years, has been a turning point. CBT has essentially been like employing a wardrobe-sized security professional, complete with earpiece, in whichever part of my brain the local riff raff come to party with no rules and cheap drink and drugs. The riff raff of course, are inflamed thoughts, the doorman, is the tools CBT give you to bring some sort of order to the party. This enables me to observe the thoughts, and crack down on the troublemakers before they even make it into a cubicle carrying a little plastic baggy with an alien face on it.

And while it’s a fragile rebuild, which will invariably throw up bad days and backwards steps, I’m at the wheel and it feels good.

So with that return of zest, I leaned in. A small commission fell into my inbox. A regular of mine. I did the job, but I also asked the client who I might contact to pitch a written column idea I’ve had, and feel would fit. I said hello to some friends/peers, approached a couple of founders about my coaching program, and remembered that it is this, the assertion of will, the expression of my desire to help people who I enjoy working for, and to whom know I can provide value. The hustle, if you will. In it to win it, in with a chance, taking the shot. Whatever your choice of description for this essential aspect of freelancing and growing as a creative professional, it must be done, and the knowledge it really, really could happen cannot just be a distant idea, but something pure, and deep within.