10/260 Finding joy in the process

Because life is too short otherwise

Somewhere on the edge of the world, everything that you perceive fades into an interdeterminate, soft, deckled edge. As you trip towards the edge of the known space, flakes of the solid world crack and fall away, floating into the space, layered pieces of paper torn from a greater whole. You come upon it all of a sudden, find yourself leaning forward with momentum while frantically stopping yourself at the edge and windmilling your arms backwards to prevent yourself from falling.

Somewhere out there is the answer that you’re after. Somewhere in that deep, blue nothing is the key to what you think you’re trying to achieve. But the fragile edges terrify you and you’d rather not risk the entire foundation underneath you falling away.

So you don’t do it. You back away until you feel safe, and sit down.

Rummaging around in your pockets for something to eat, or drink, or distract you from things, you sit and ponder. Doing so, you find a small piece of paper. You don’t remember putting anything in your pocket. Puzzled, you pull it out and unfold it.

Pay attention.

Baffled, you screw it up into a little ball and throw it away from you. It seems like a futile gesture; it didn’t go very far. But as you watched, it unrolled itself, tore itself into little pieces and formed itself into something else.

Ahhh, you think. I know what this is.

Picking it up, you walk over to the edge space and lean forwards. And then you go.

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This is not a random story, something I just concocted. Over the past 10 weeks I’ve been writing to you about all kinds of crazy, amazing, and introspective things.

This week, I made a decision about Brutal Pixie, and about my role in the business. That decision is that scaling this business is not in my cards. You’ve probably worked that out by following me along so far. I’ve decided that there’s more power and more joy in staying micro.

There are many reasons for this decision, and they might be important for you to understand. More important is for me to take off this gigantic weight that has been squeezing me and weighing me down.

Back in 2013 when I started the business, it happened because getting a job in Adelaide proved damned near impossible for me every time I tried it. I couldn’t be bothered. Then I had an opportunity, so I chased it. It paid off, and I kept going afterwards.

The Pixie has always been a solution looking for a problem. This is exactly why building the brand and the business has been such an epic amount of work. There’s been a lot of discovering where the puzzle pieces go, because I didn’t understand it right in the beginning.

This is why it’s been so much more difficult than scaling Metal as Fuck for example. With that, I knew the market intimately; I understood the opportunities; promoting it was relatively effortless.

But Pixie? It emerged from a freelancing option, and was never a solution. It’s been more about ego and meeting other people’s expectations.

More critically, however, I’ve realised in the past week that I care more about my lifestyle and my wellbeing than how many people I employ. I care more about mastery than becoming a slave to always chasing more, more, more, more, more business. I care more about my happiness and my impact than about a giant footprint.

Now. This doesn’t mean that I’m shedding all of the brilliant people and systems around me. It just means that I’m letting go of the idea that I need to grow it. For now, with great systems in place, and a great team of contractors, I’m able to relax and just focus on the work.

Because it’s the work that makes me happy. It’s working on the things that reinforce my own development towards mastery that make me happy.

So this week I’ve been thinking about lifestyle design, production scheduling and timing in 2019, and what that looks like. I’ve been chewing on ideas and marketing plans for development; new products; new services; potential pricing shifts; the whole shebang.

Letting go of the subacute stress that I’ve been carrying for five years is proving to be an absolute boon, too. I’ve found that I am getting my mojo back, having filled pages in my notebooks with really brilliant (and relevant) ideas. Ideas are the yardstick of health in my life. :)

Sometimes you have to go right to the edge, and step away from the things that you know, are comfortable with, and are expected to do, and just forge your own way.