Milestone Update: First Meeting With Editor

Last Friday I finally got to meet with my editor about my first draft. It was an amazing experience for me. I chose to completely remove myself from the content of the book until the editor was able to speak with me. That turned out to be a great decision. I was able to look at everything with a fresh perspective. Being immersed in the creative period makes it extremely difficult to objectively judge your own work. Her primary critique was that book seemed to be many books inside of one book.

“I can tell that you kind of noticed that at some point and tried to tie them together, but it didn’t exactly work. You obviously have a lot of ideas. Always remember, you can always put some of this stuff in another book.”

She was right. Although I am not necessarily looking forward to writing several books, it was nice to be reminded that if I really have something I need to tell the world I can always write another book. I have to admit I had this pressure on myself where I was writing as if this was the only book I’d ever be able to write. It genuinely felt like this book was the only chance to share my thoughts with the world. It was like if I died ‘tomorrow’, I would at least have those words to live on.

Because of this issue most of the meeting was about direction and forming a more concise message. She had so much constructive criticism and I am excited to meet her challenges. The greatest part of it all was to see how much I actually wrote. It assured me of the importance of working hard on building something today; because once it is built your accomplishment cannot be taken away from you. “Wow, I wrote all of that…wow…I can’t believe I did that.” When I looked at the papers I could see early mornings, long hours, missed TV shows and outings with friends. Those papers were a culmination of at least 8 months of my life, just as a college degree represents a person’s years spent in classrooms and libraries. I still have a long way to go, but being told what I did wrong has never been so encouraging. Written by Sean

Are Your TOO Good???

I can’t lie, I’m good at EVERYTHING…

Today someone told me “You’re good at everything you try.”  This is nothing new to me. About six or seven years ago my dad told me a story. To cut to the point, he was volunteering at my elementary school one day: “A little kid ran up to me, I guess he was in your class…and was like ‘You’re Sean’s dad?! He’s good at EVERYTHING!'” Before that point though, I had never given it much thought. I was only entering my mid-teens and when you are a child you don’t truly articulate things…you kind of just be who you are, doing stuff without gauging the supposed difficulty level. So at that point I began to pay attention.

From my analysis I can see how some people may feel that I’m good at everything. I may not be good at something initially but I do pick up on new things relatively quickly.  This may sound like bragging, but to me it is a relative truth. By “relative truth,” I mean: 1) I haven’t tried everything. 2) I actually know a lot of things that I am certainly not good at.  So what is the point of me talking about my uncanny ability to be consistently average with less than average effort???

At this point in my life, I do not take it as a compliment. It did not take me long to realize that there are A LOT of people that are good at A LOT of things. So I decided early on that it does not define me as any better than anyone else. Despite whatever “level” I am on, I have tried and failed at going to the next one time and time again.

More than anything though, I desire excellence. All of my heroes are great and like most children I grew up wanting to be like them. Because of this I have been plagued with fear of dying with the label “Jack of all trades, master of none.”  I have mastered nothing and I am not even 100% sure about what I want to master. Adapting quickly only means I have a head-start of sorts. But what is a 20 yard head start if you never takeoff from that point? If anything the person who has worked to be beside you has more reason to feel accomplished than you, the person who began at the very point they still stand. Right???

This is the reason I contribute to this website. I am sharing my dreams openly to help hold myself accountable to a level of excellence beyond anything that I have yet to achieve.  Listen to enough successful people speak and it will be clear that a focus on creating and leveraging mastery trumps all. Does anyone understand where I am coming from or do I sound like an ungrateful, whiny a-hole?