almost exactly 8 years now<\/a> \u2013 am I, in some strange way, afraid of success?<\/p>\nThis seems a very odd statement. Why would someone who makes a living by succeeding (in getting commissions to write, in getting speaking and judging gigs, in doing day-rate consultancy) be at all afraid of success?<\/p>\n
I don’t know, but if I take a step back and look at my career to date, I haven’t pushed as hard as I could have done. I probably haven’t earned the sort of money that someone in my position would normally bring in (not that I am complaining about the decent salary that I earn). I have been very successful (or, at least it seems that way) in building profile and reputation, and in output \u2013 but I haven’t been strategic. I have hardly bothered pitching article ideas to editors, I haven’t been systematic and efficient in my networking, and I have no proper plan for what I would like to be doing in 6 months, a year, or five years. I’ve let people come to me, but I haven’t reached out to them. Yet, despite this I have been very busy and have made a good living.<\/p>\n
If I were to sit down with myself and have a conversation, I’d give myself a telling off for this lack of planning and strategy. For not making the most of my potential. I would conclude that there is something about being successful that I am afraid of. Why else would I avoid it? I justify this lack of commercial drive to myself using the flimsy argument that I’m like an academic, happy to be playing with ideas and writing about the sorts of things I want to write about, and uninterested in money. This may be true, but am I using it as an excuse?<\/p>\n
So, the challenge for 2016 is for me to begin looking to be a bit more commercially savvy, and make more money, horrible though this sounds. I want to do more speaking\/lecturing gigs, because I enjoy these \u2013 they are of the moment, and I am getting quite good at them. I’m already doing quite a lot of wine judging internationally, but there’s room for more. And I’d like to do more long-form writing for other publications. And I still have room for a good book project this year, something that I really enjoy. I’m going to take my own advice, and I’m not going to be afraid of success.<\/p>\n
The picture? Lichens on a rock. Lichens are very interesting: an organism that is a combination of a fungal partner with an algal partner. They only grow when they are drying out or they are getting wet. I guess it’s like that with us humans (although the wet bit is metaphorical not literal).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This is an interesting thought. [It came to me all of a sudden, and I haven’t been drinking.] As a freelancer \u2013 I’ve been completely freelance for almost exactly 8…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13952","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13952","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13952"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13952\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13955,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13952\/revisions\/13955"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13952"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13952"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13952"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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<\/p>\n