A friendly reminder that there’s no newsletter next week as it’s Canada Day and I’ll be camping. Pitching Power Hour will take place on Wednesday July 9th at 11:00 AM.
In the earliest days of reality television, when it was a genuinely fascinating glimpse into someone else’s life and long before it became a byline for exploitative cheesiness, there was a TLC show called Clean Sweep.
Based on my memories, I could have sworn it was on the air for nearly a decade, when, in actuality, it had just two short seasons (14 episodes), debuting in 2003. Perhaps it was a hit on the rewatch circuit, as I recall many a delightful early Saturday mornings, watching it in the living room of our first home and badgering Ryan with organization projects based on what was happening in the show. Clean Sweep’s premise was simple. A host, a carpenter, and an organization specialist descended on the home of someone whose office, playroom, or basement was a hot mess. The host (Tava) would ask them how things got so bad (they never got around to properly unpacking after they moved in), the carpenter (Eric) would whip up a new bookshelf or toy chest, and the organizer (Peter) would make them haul everything out of the room and onto their front lawn, forcing them to divide all objects into keep, sell, and toss piles. There were tears. There were cliches. And there was always a picture-perfect early-aughts decorated room at the end.
Honestly, it was just so wholesome. Who doesn’t have a messy room? Who doesn’t feel like they’d finally have their life together if only they could just have a proper entertainment unit that also offered stealthy storage? I’ve had an abiding love for all things decluttering ever since.
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However, there was one dark corner of my life which desperately needed a clean sweep of its own. My Google Drive was a deep mine of 12 years of business and writing files. They were all meticulously organized. Nothing was messy. But nothing was being used. Yet I was holding onto all of it in the hopes that I might one day practice what I preach and suddenly repurpose all that material into something helpful. Something valuable. Something that I could sell.
Don’t get me wrong. Making the most of your time and money is the key to freelance success. Getting just one story out of each interview isn’t the way to succeed in this industry. Recycling is gold. This fact was impressed upon me back in 2014. I can still picture the exact layout of the lecture hall at the TBEX Athens conference as I sat in on a presentation about repurposing content. Looking back, I think the point the speaker was trying to make was that you could turn those 20 Facebook posts about things to see in Rome into a cool blog post. Do it a couple of times for other Italian cities, and you’ve got yourself a mini e-book. Sound advice. Perfect advice. Alas, it’s been eating away at me ever since.
How much of a failure was I for never having done something similar? How much money did I leave on the table by never launching my own next thing? How much unnecessary anxiety did I add to my life, living with a to-do list that truly had no end, as there is no limit to how many times a piece of content can be recycled, upcycled, and repurposed. I wasn’t working smarter! I was working harder, writing new blog posts like a peasant when I could have just repurposed all those conference notes, presentation notes, and interview notes. I was a sucker. I was an amateur. I. WAS. TIRED.
Lo and behold, last week, some eleven years after Athens, I found myself with a free afternoon, and I started working on the task I had put on my agenda a hundred times before but never actually executed. I began to repurpose some things. Old articles that once appeared on now-shuttered sites were republished as blog posts. Others got the addition of a fresh pitch, ready to be sent back out into the publishing world. Honestly, it was a rush. I’M DOING IT, my brain screamed. I’M GETTING THROUGH THE LIST. I was uploading some old presentation material into ChatGPT to generate something, anything that would be helpful, when I realized that this wasn’t exhilarating. It sucked. It actually really sucked.
Was I really going to hold myself to such a high standard that I refused to have anything in my life that wasn’t doing double or triple duty? Was I really going to tell my coaching clients that it is absolutely okay to have stories that you move past and never look to again while telling myself that I was a failure if I didn’t find a way to reuse the content of my decade-old Instagram presentation? What story was I missing out on RIGHT NOW while I was trying to rejig a 2022 piece on travel spots you can see only at low tide? (Spoiler: Sounds exciting. It’s not.) Instead of luxuriating in the joy that comes from passionately putting together a presentation for a group I care about, I was telling myself that I must be a surgeon, meticulously carving up bits from old slide shows, when I was supposed to be an artist.
And so I culled. I decluttered. I gave Google Drive a clean sweep that Tava, Eric, and Peter would be proud of. Along the way, I gave myself permission to do two things I had never really done before: Celebrate and grieve. I never really celebrated the fact that I LAUNCHED A BUSINESS back in 2014. It was called Sculpt Social. It provided social media coaching and consulting services. I was incredibly good at it. That was me! I did that! Sculpt Social represented a whole lot of those files in my Google Drive. Alas, it was really tough to make a lot of money from it, especially when I realized that social media didn’t always align with my values or interests. I let it wind down naturally and ‘officially’ closed it in 2021 after seven years of operations. Do you know how many businesses don’t make it six months, let alone seven years? Neither do I, but I bet it’s a lot. I believe I posted briefly about my decision online and had a glass of wine on the porch, but that was it. No time to celebrate that I did a really, really hard and brave thing. No time to celebrate that I was good at it, and while I didn’t become a millionaire, I made some money and kept my head above water. No time to grieve the fact that I didn’t turn out quite as I expected or that I wasn’t selling the rights to some tech billionaire, or that I probably spent way too many Friday nights glued to my computer (for work) instead of being glued to my laptop (for fun).
So that’s what I’m doing with you all here. Celebrating, grieving, and giving myself permission to clean sweep and move on.
A little cafe I really admired recently closed, much to the dismay of its fans. I visited on their second-to-last day of operations and saw that their walls were covered in colourful hearts, on which patrons had written something they loved about it. I didn’t make a contribution because my own heart was busy processing what a brilliant idea this was —to wrap both celebration and grief into one package. It also reminded me that it was okay to keep a few pieces of ephemera from the business I once owned. A few files will survive my own clean sweep as mementos from a bygone time. I don’t have to treat them as inventory that I have to move at all costs, a clearinghouse of things that didn’t work out and are now going cheap in the sales. Clean Sweep always ends with the homeowners looking towards the future, and that’s a lesson I’ll apply as well. No more looking back. We aren’t going that way.
Happy summer everyone!
Vanessa
