“I always jump!”

That’s what I often tell people. When I am in doubt and the reasonable, rational part of me says ‘No,’ but the part of me that believes in possibilities says ‘Yes…Imagine if I succeed!’

And I always jump.

Over the years these jumps have made me-

🙌Leave a perfectly good bank job (as I was told) which offered promotions and maybe a better desk the next year, without an idea of what to do next

🙌Start technical writing as an intern earning 1/3^rd of my banker’s salary. This job taught me that it is possible to have a good work environment and a great boss- I never knew those possibilities existed before and you could experience them together!

🙌Leave good technical writing work to start the life of a freelance writer. This was my most ‘on my own’ phase and it taught me so much. From writing blog posts to creating non-fiction books and even animation scripts and circling back to white papers.

👍It was a learning in sitting and writing for hours, researching, creating outlines, listening deep to what was really asked and then matching and even exceeding client expectations.

👍One of my clients couriered the published version of the book I had edited for him from Canada at that time. I didn’t expect this level of graciousness.

👍Another told me that when his wife read my ghostwritten chapters, she thought he had written them because she could hear his voice through it all!

There were some not-so great learnings too that showed me what more I had to learn

👠It’s not easy sitting on your own and writing when you have no mentor or an experienced hand to guide you. Blogs, books and articles could do only so much. You have to find the will within you to keep writing each day.

👠You have to find the courage to talk to new clients and say that you are good because I had never worked with other writers. The only writers I knew were those whose books I read. They were good writers. They were the best. Reading them, I knew I was still not there. The fact was, I didn’t know where I was because I had no other writers to gauge myself against. Confidence is a mind game and being a writer, I have a fanciful imagination that can see the best and often the worst in a situation. But I love jumping so I jumped again!

🙌This time as a writer I strode back into a corporate job, with flexible hours. It was fun and more than that it was illuminating because now for the first time I worked with other writers. I could see what I wrote was not bad, it was not even okay…it was good because the copy I write that year (I started working as a copywriter) won the sales!

Confidence is totally a mind game. Once you are convinced that you are good, right down to your bones then you know those client discussions that had me cringing before…

Discussions that went like, “we know a writer that doesn’t charge as much as you and is ready to write on our demand without asking for structured timelines.”

Now those discussions were easy to handle because I knew what I could deliver.

🙌I jumped again. Back into freelancing but this time I was surer and after writing varied content I now knew what I wanted to do.

I wanted to be the bridge for my authors.

Writing is my skill. I enjoy it and even more than writing I love seeing my authors share their expertise in a book that connects to their readers!

This became my next jump😊

Yes, I always jump. And that jumping has taught me so much.

That jump is my version of hope. It is the belief that there is a better possibility in this world. Just because I don’t know the people who have seen those possibilities doesn’t mean they don’t exist. Dream on…because in dreaming we create our reality.

Don’t forget to jump.

 

…..