Sometimes, life hands you lemons and you make it into lemonade. And then you food blog about the making of delicious lemonade and attempt to find a new you as a work-at-home entrepreneur.
Sometimes, life punches you in the throat and steals your pocket change. Then it makes the big L sign at you.
Loser.
It’s hard to not compare your own progress against that of others in almost everything we do, but most especially when you’re in a competitive environment such as the world of social media. Everyone is screaming for a piece of your eyeballs, when you’re the reader. You’re a hot commodity. So when you’re a writer, you’re constantly watching what everyone else is up to to make sure that you’re not losing your edge. Even when you know better. Even when you know it’s an apples and oranges comparison.
Actually, the apples and oranges usually just makes the whole scenario worse, because then you do stupid stuff like think to yourself “She’s got a million likes on Facebook and she writes about that??”
You can’t do what we do without learning to cope with failure. Most of the time you’re like, whatever, there are other fish in the sea, and I got other fishing lines in the ocean.
But sometimes the stars align, you happen to see that one of your friends from high school is a wildly successful something-or-other who just finished a vacation in Jamaica back in February and is planning a spring break getaway in Mexico, and you get a bunch of fail dumped in your lap all at once. Even the toughest-skinned have to pour themselves a glass of wine.
You get all depressed. The lines you draw around your self-identity become blurred.
Your successes become diminished in your own eyes.
And then you wonder why the hell you even bothered to put on pants today, because, on the bad days, the difference between a work-at-home entrepreneur and being an unemployed sloth is only a fancy job title.
While you’re reeling from life’s little haymakers, you must find a good friend. The best kind of friend is the one who tells you that you’re your own worst critic, and assures you that this is a positive trait, because it means you have high expectations of yourself. They’d say, finish the bottle of wine, have yourself a nice bath, and kick someone’s posterior tomorrow.
Then they tell you if you really were a loser, they wouldn’t hesitate to tell you so.
And they’d mean it.
Who needs a cheering squad when you have friends like these?
Tomorrow’s another day, and there’s always more butt to be kicked.
Soldier on.
