Happy Halloween! [Hey, it might not be a holiday you celebrate, but I’m going out dressed like the Tooth Fairy later tonight, so you’re going to have to humor me.]
Let’s talk about work! Haunting work probably doesn’t look a lot like ghosts. It might look like someone with a sheet over their head, if you want to get really elaborate with your metaphor about how you can’t really see what you want, or you’re hiding from it under that sheet… Haunting, really, is the work you’re meant to do.
Is there something that always kinda sticks in your head?
You know what I’m talking about – the kind of thing that pops up every time you have a bad day. Or even a good day, but doing the wrong thing. Loads of people seem to imagine being a writer. Maybe you imagine being a chef. Running a non-profit foundation. Perhaps it’s a product your team could create. An impact you could have. A thing you wished you could do as a kid. A dream you put aside.
Try it.
Here’s why: yes, some of the things we come up with on our rough days are escapist fantasies. Even our escapist fantasies, though, point to things we love. I have a fantasy about starting a taco stand in a far-flung place, offering people amazing surprises while exploring new places… and those are both things I get to do pretty regularly. Without tacos. Whew! I don’t even like food service, but I keep the taco stand idea for days when offering intellectual surprises just doesn’t sound so exciting, and I’d rather cook fish.
Some ideas that haunt you are really, truly, serious things you need to go try, too.
Did you want to be on stage when you were five? Have you found yourself drawn again and again to dreaming what it might be like to be an actor? Then. Look for a community theater already. Go take an acting class (or a ballet class, a juggling-on-a-unicycle class, a poetry class, whatever dream you keep coming back to).
These hauntings are the sort of thing you don’t mess with. Everyone knows what happens to the teenagers who pretend the house isn’t haunted and take off their pants, right? Don’t question this stuff and debate whether it’s right or profitable.
Just try it.
It won’t kill you. But leave your pants on if you’re making out in a haunted house, okay?