When Authentic Isn’t Good Enough

One of the secrets to my freelance career is that I do a number of related services, and the relationships often lead to new clients in one area because they worked with me in another. For example, a training client might become a coaching client. A coaching client might take a journaling class.

Jigsawing related services often means the difference between freelance survival or failure. And in today’s economy, failure is not something I care to contemplate.

Jessica Hagy: thisisindexed.com/2009/02/fate-decisions/

I never hide my various lines of business, but occasionally a client doesn’t understand how I can be more than one thing. Most often, the way it leads to trouble is that a client sees me as a writer and doesn’t understand how come I can’t spend more time writing. If they don’t understand that I am running a training program, they may become resentful when I ask for a longer deadline.

“How long does it take you to write that, anyway?”

“I have other work that is on my plate. I can have it by Friday, but not Wednesday.”

“If you really wanted the job, you’d meet my deadline.”

“I do want the job, but I can’t accept it if the deadline is Wednesday because I can’t deliver it on Wednesday. Much as I’d like to help you, I can’t accept a job knowing I can’t meet the deadline.”

“Then you really don’t want the job, do you. Anyone could finish it by Wednesday.”

And so, because the client doesn’t understand that I’ll be running a training program, and doesn’t care (and I can’t expect them to) I lost the job.

It’s a bit harder when it come to friendships. I’ve long suspected that my workaholic tendencies make friendships difficult. And when your work supplies necessities, the work needs to come first. I try to keep the bonds of friendship alive and working, but there are days when I simply can’t meet a friend across the Valley for lunch, can’t chat with a friend for an hour, can’t read and answer a complicated email. And today it cost me a friend.

When your authentic dedication to supporting your family doesn’t leave room for friends, do you give them up? Do you let your family slide? Do you shortchange a client’s job? Today’s choice was not easy. I apologized and it wasn’t enough. My comfort was that I made the choice that hurt, but it was the choice I could understand. Sometimes being authentic isn’t enough. But it’s all I have.

–Quinn McDonald is a writer, life- and creativity coach. She’s also a trainer in business communications and helps people who can’t draw keep art journals.

Don: Everyday Hero in our Lives

We meet people in our lives who are extraordinary in ordinary ways. If we are lucky, they stay in our lives long enough for us to know we should thank them. If our hearts are in the right place, we remember to thank them and tell others about them.

This is an acknowledgment of Don, who has struggled against so much, I can’t believe how often I hear his big, full-meant laugh at the silliness of ordinary life.

Don in the old house

Don is a friend of my husband’s. They met in a transformational seminar, both in search of a new way of looking at their lives. Don has enough health challenges in his life to make most people quit. The shortcut to the real point of the story is that Don will not quit. Pills, monitoring, adjusting is simply part of his day. He never complains, he never pulls out the health trump card. It’s that very issue that gets him in trouble occasionally. He overreaches what his body can provide.

Don was going to ride across the country on the passenger side of the moving van, with Kent driving. We all assumed he was too frail to drive. When he offered to drive part way, it sounded like a good idea–carefully monitored, of course.

When the truck turned out too be too small to hold the motorcycles, and we rented an additional truck, Don quietly volunteered to drive the second truck. We accepted. With lots of rules to protect his health the way we thought it should be protected. Don carefully steered us to the idea that he was in charge of his health and in charge of knowing how much he could manage. And he would manage it. He did this so carefully that it sounded like a good idea.

I was relieved, as my job was to fly to Phoenix, pick up the cats that had been shipped already, keep them in my apartment, complete the purchase of the new house, and move as much as I could into the new house from my apartment. I’ve seen corporate board meetings with less logistics than this move.

So Kent climbed into one van, and Don into the other (after kissing Judy and telling her he’d see her soon) and headed West. A 26-foot rental van hauling a trailer on which sits our personal van, followed by another van carrying three motorcycles, a large ficus, and random leftover household goods is a caravan of two that can’t back up. So they only drove forward. For 2,400 forward miles–through the rolling hills of Virginia, the mountains of Tennessee, across the Mississippi river, the plains of Oklahoma and Texas, into the mountains of New Mexico and Arizona and then South onto the Sonoran desert floor. It took the better part of six days.

In the following week, Don helped unpack, cut down overgrown trees and vines, installed electric outlets on the kitchen islands, removed a chandelier from the ceiling of my office, and exchanged it for a ceiling fan, replaced toilets, fixed faucets, hung shelving in the laundry room. And to the joy of my heart, he and my husband got the motorcycles out of the van (after the effort it took to get them into the same van), put the handlebars into place, and made them road-worthy. I never heard him complain of the heat. I never heard him complain at all.

Don worked every day. Hard work in hot weather. Every night the three of us spent time in the pool, looking up at stars, grateful that all the logistics had worked, that the whole move was coming together. Don can make you laugh, and laugh hard. He can also make you think and explain how mysterious household devices work.

You may be holding your breath for a disaster here. But there is none. Only good news. In the truck, along with our motorcycles, we had brought Don’s. And after being with us a week and a day, Don fulfilled a dream that had driven him to climb in the van in the first place: he drove his motorcycle back across country. I was hugely worried, but Don, along with Dirty Harry, knows his limitations. He drove through sun, and unfortunately, through a good deal of hurricane-spawned rain. But he drove. Don lives riding a motorcycle like no one else I know. 2,400 miles back across the country. He arrived back to Judy in good health.

Everyone should be as lucky as to have a Don in their lives. He is an inspiration for everyone who has a life-threatening disease and a bigger inspiration for those of us who are healthy. It takes a big friend to do what Don did, and a big dream to ride a motorcycle across the country in sun and rain, wind and sand. And Don did what most of us put off till it’s too late: he went after his big dream, and he completed it.

So thanks, Don, for making the move possible. Not just for doing hours of work to make the house great, but just for being in our lives and serving as inspiration and a role model of what friendship looks like. And it looks great from here.

–Quinn McDonald is proud to know Don, and to call him her friend. She’s a writer and certified creativity coach who helps people dream big and follow the dream. She can take no credit for Don’s dream or his work. That was all Don’s character. (c) 2008 All rights reserved.