You better start swimmin' or you'll sink like a stone.
Are you reinventing yourself? I am. So are a lot of my friends.
My friend Andrew has gone from magazine editor to ghostwriter. Andrew’s wife, Madeleine, went from graphic designer to full-time mom to professional photographer. Mike went from ghostwriter to daddy blogger. Wally toiled in corporate PR for eons; now he’s an online entrepreneur who shows others how to summon the gumption to work for themselves. James managed a Mercedes dealership until less than two years ago. Now he’s doing seven figures as an Internet marketer who shows others how to do the same. My buddy Chris was a DJ in London. Two years ago he wrote an ebook, launched a website, and today he lives in Beverly Hills and coaches hundreds of others in how to start online businesses.
My pal Jay was laid off last year from his job in human development for a big corporation. He had the good sense to jump on the John Carlton Action 2010 seminar I posted about last month. Now he’s a Carlton client studying the art of marketing his consulting business and another business he recently invested in.
My wife was an actress. Now she’s a copy editor at one of the world’s biggest ad agencies.
Me? Last year I won the Lowell Thomas silver award as Travel Journalist of the Year. This year I’m barely doing any travel writing. I’m more focused on copywriting and blogging (natch!)—and, in the spirit of Surefire Writing and my ebook—working on ways to help other writers. A year and a half ago I had no clue how to put anything up on the Internet (other than to turn my copy in to a client). Now I run a bunch of websites, and I do a lot of the design and tech work myself.
The reason I became a writer in the first place was to have a blast with life—to try new things and write about them, to get paid for learning and growing. So maybe reinvention comes naturally to me. I do know what it’s like to feel stuck, though. This feels better.
Reinvention is all the craze. The word itself is simply a reinvention of others like stretching, growing, changing. The world is changing like crazy. It’s reinventing itself right in front of our eyes. And that’s good. If we go with it. If we fight it, it all seems nuts.
So how are you reinventing yourself? If you’re a freelance writer, are you looking for new markets, new media? If you’re a journalist, have you thought about copywriting? Or at least branching out beyond your niche? Thought about starting a blog or writing an ebook? If you’re an Internet marketer, have you tried writing articles?
If you’re not yet a writer, but want to give it try, what are you waiting for?
We all have multiple dimensions, new depths to discover. Change is what makes life worth living. I intend to continue reinventing myself for as long as I live.
