Just to clear things up for anyone confused by my ‘dancing’ video in the last blog … the video was not shot as I danced my way through the pitch. My phone and I were dancing in the dressing room at Century 21 while I tried on clothes to pitch in. I haven’t even written the bloody pitch (much less rehearsed it…). The mere word ‘pitching’ is still sending icy fingers of anxiety down my spine. But, best news of the … YEAR?? … An old friend (who happens to have an Oscar nomination for screenwriting under his belt (among other things) BUT WHO’S COUNTING) wrote me, and I will quote:
“I have a feeling you'd be very good in a pitch. Enormously good, actually.”
Unfortunately, he went on to darken the mood:
“Like anything, it's a question of starting.”
GAAAAAAAA. I’d so much rather be dancing in fitting rooms at every cut-rate store left in New York than actually start working on the pitch. I've got to comparison shop for godssake!
Fortunately, a few years ago, I discovered a force of nature in the form of Marie Forleo. She’s really smart, she’s really successful and her blog/vlog topics are like crack: ‘get more done in less time’, ‘addicted to work?’, ‘overcome fear and self-doubt’. You see why I'd be interested.
(AKA I can deal with my control issues in the privacy of my own home.)
In a recent vlog/blog, Marie recounted a Stephen Covey story. A professor showed his students a jar chock full of rocks and asked them if it was full. The students saw that no more rocks could fit in and answered “Yes!”. The professor poured a bag of pebbles over the rocks, filling a lot of the empty space with the pebbles and asked them again if the jar was full. Embarrassed at having been tricked they were reduced to muttering “Well now it is.” Of course the crafty professor had another trick up his sleeve and poured a bag of sand over the rocks and pebbles and filled every open space in the jar. The shame-faced students sat quietly in their seats.
Next, the professor poured everything out of the jar and then proceeded to put only the sand back into it. Then there wasn’t even room to fit all the rocks back in, much less the pebbles.
The moral of the story is time management. Let the rocks of your life, the big things which really matter to you, be what you schedule first. Marie Forleo shared her own priorities (and one of them was ’time off’ ahem). (That’s another blog.)
Obviously getting this pitch together is one of my rocks. I can’t let my new infatuation with Instagram or spur of the moment distractions be the sand which fills my days and crowds out time for my rocks.
I hope this was helpful! Thanks for reading!