The Successful Dilettante Ezine

The Successful Dilettante
February 5, 2007 Issue 15 ISSN 19354886
Editor: Susan Henderson, coach@susanhenderson.com
Visit my website at: http://www.susanhenderson.com

The Successful Dilettante, published on the 5th and 20th of each month, is sent only to those who have subscribed to it - or was forwarded to you by someone you know. I value your privacy and never share my mailing list with anyone. If a copy has been sent to you by a friend or colleague and you wish to receive your own copies, you may subscribe by visiting: http://www.susanhenderson.com/newsletter.html.

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Greetings!

I hope this finds you healthy, wealthy and wise - or at least on your own particular path to getting an abundant life that works for you. A warm welcome to both old and new subscribers alike. I am grateful to you for sharing this ezine with your friends, family. and colleagues. My invitation is always open to you to contact me with suggestions for this ezine or to share your challenges and successes in becoming a successful dilettante.

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Happy Birthday To Me!

Yep, today is my birthday and this morning when I opened my email I had an unexpected surprise in that in addition to well wishes from friends and family, I received a few emails from folks I have done business with or have a professional online relationship with. This one from Mike, the creator of www.tut.com takes the birthday cake:

Monday, February 05, 2007

Happy Birrrrthday to Youuuu,
Happy Birrrrthday to Youuuu,
Happy Birrrrthday Dear Susan,
Happy Birrrrthday to Youuuu!

A few years back… not so long ago, heaven and earth erupted into a major celebration with the news of your impending adventure into this very time and space. You see, someone like Susan Henderson doesn’t come along all that often… in fact, there’s never been a single one like you, nor is there ever ANY possibility that another will come again. You’re an Angel among us. Someone, whose eyes see what no others will EVER see, whose ears hear what no others will EVER hear, and whose perspective and feelings will NEVER, ever be duplicated. Without YOU, the Universe, and ALL THAT IS, would be sadly less than it is.

Quite simply:

You’re the kind of person
Who’s hard to forget,
A one-in-a-million
To the people you’ve met.

Your friends are as varied
As the places you go,
And they all want to tell you
In case you don’t know:

That you make a big difference
In the lives that you touch,
By taking so little
And giving so much!

Susan, you are so AWESOME! For your birthday, friends and angels from every corner of the Universe, including buddies you didn’t know you had, will be with you to wish you the HAPPIEST of Birthdays and an exciting new year in time and space. You won’t be alone!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, Susan!

Mike
Orlando, Florida, USA

He included a link to a musical version of the above. I am grinning ear to ear. If you are one of the few amongst us who are not already signed up a www.tut.com to receive short daily messages from the Universe seemingly directed just to you just in time, I highly recommend it.

And whether today is your birthday or not, I share the sentiment in the poem above with you, my dear readers. It is my belief that the world is a better place because YOU were born into it.

Love & Joy,
Susan

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Featured Guest: John Williams

Today's featured guest is an extremely fascinating fellow from the U.K. He is a great model of creating a life combining his many interests and talents. I found him through a post he made on the Barbara Sher Forum which led me to his website and the confirmed belief that he is a "successful dilettante" with a story to share. I contacted him with an
invitation, he accepted, and so here he is.

Q: John, how have you come to live the life you enjoy today?

JW: I currently describe myself as an “Information Entrepreneur”. It’s not the snappiest of titles but it’s the closest I’ve got to a single name for all the strands of my career. The central strand of this is my work as a life coach working with freelancers, creative people, and the occasional successful dilettante. My aim is to help people develop what I call a “Freestyle" career – a career as individual as you are, that engages your natural talents and creativity and makes you a good income.

I am also in the process of developing several websites aimed at freelancers, coaches and people seeking a coach and I help other freelancers with their Internet strategy.

The first 10 years of my career were actually as a programmer on software systems for TV stations and Special FX, sometimes working at sites like the BBC or Disney Animation LA. Then I joined an Internet consultancy dealing with video on the web which was great fun until the dotcom crash happened. I moved from there to one of the world’s largest management consultancies - a very good career move on the face of it and one of the most miserable years of my working life in actuality!

Four years ago I escaped to go freelance as a consultant in broadcast systems. Broad-cast is currently undergoing a revolution to deliver programmes to viewers at any time on any device you can think of (your mobile, your iPod, and your fridge before long) and my work was at the centre of this. I sometimes made enough from one month’s contract work to take the next three off so I could pursue my other passions.

Although I worked in an interesting area, the corporate environment has never really suited me and ultimately the switching between contract work and the stuff much closer to my heart was too frustrating and I decided to step away from contracting to focus on my new career as coach and “infopreneur”.

Q: When did you realize you would be happiest doing a multitude of things?

JW: When I was a child I passed through a number of science interests including Chemistry, Psychology, Electronics, and Computers. I never wanted to be an expert in any of them and for years I thought I had gained nothing because I hadn’t gone deeper. I finally realised the connection was ideas – my greatest love is discovering new ideas and sharing them with others. This is one of the reasons I love coaching – I get to pass on all the things I’ve discovered over many years.

I was brought up to be very conservative about work. I knew somewhere in me that I hated having a job but I thought that there was something wrong with me to feel that way. One day, I did an exercise to work out what I really wanted if I could have anything at all and I wrote this; “To be paid to play all day”.

That means to do whatever I felt like doing just because I enjoyed it and then get paid for it. This seemed impossible to me at the time but a few weeks later my company announced we would all be offered redundancy. I walked away with many months’ pay – and I got to play! I started to build a freelance career for myself and at the same time indulge myself in whatever interest came along. One of the first creative projects I did was to literally make an exhibit of myself in a new museum called “The Museum of Me”.

Q: Wow, that sounds intriguing. Will you share a bit more about that?

JW: The Museum Of Me was a temporary museum in London where the exhibits were about the personal lives of individuals. I have a strong belief that “What is most personal is most general” as Carl Rogers once said so I wanted to get involved. I was video-taped talking about the complexities of the pituitary condition I have had all my life, what meaning I had made of it and what I’d learned from it. I ended up as a looping video on a TV inside a glass cabinet. You can read a little more about the museum here.

Q: You have so many creative interests, John. How have you balanced all this fun, fascinating stuff into your life and career?

JW: I’ve indulged lots of my creative interests over the years. I’ve written a couple of published articles (a serious one in a UK newspaper and a humorous one in the Reader’s Digest). I enjoy making electronic music in my home studio and had a couple of pieces of “Sound Art” included in a radio arts programme called “Engaged”. They also commissioned me to write a jingle which I constructed out of UK and US telephone engaged tones. I experimented with standup comedy a few years ago firstly taking a course and then performing a handful of gigs.

I’ve also been active in patient support groups. I have a complex pituitary condition which required Growth Hormone treatment as a child. This drove me to get involved with the Child Growth Foundation charity – I lead discussions at their patient conventions and edited their newsletter for a while. One of my missions is to encourage the healthcare system to be more patient-centred and increase the emotional literacy of doctors. I’m also in the 6th year of humanistic psychotherapy training which helps me in every area of my life and work.

I find it difficult to work with more than one of my interests at a time – one always fights the other for my time and attention. I’m most productive when I can focus on one primary thing until it reaches fruition. I’m fortunate that I’ve now found a career as coach and infopreneur that engages all the skills that I enjoy using and seem to come naturally to me – discovering and sharing new ideas, working with people, my interest in self improvement, my fascination with marketing, plus writing, talking, and using technology creatively.

I have a passion for gadgets but I hate when sloppy design makes technology hard to use or unreliable so I launched a blog called TechnologyTurkey.com as a vent for my frustration.

My current creative project aside from this is to get my proposal for a documentary on the Science of Optimism made and broadcast. It’s been shortlisted by BBC Radio twice but not greenlighted so far.

Q: How do you manage your time? Do you make a plan?

JW: I’m not a naturally organised person – I’ve had to discover stuff that works for me. On Sundays I write a weekly list of all the tasks I want to do in each area of my life. I highlight the high priority ones and allow for the fact that I will only do some of the lower priority tasks. This allows me the flexibility to do what I feel like on some days.

For daily planning, I’ve become a master at using Microsoft Outlook and the many ways it has (if you know where to look) to represent your calendar. I tried using electronic organisors and none (since the ancient Psion) have come anywhere near being usable for someone like me. I use my diary as a place to think and capture thoughts, and only paper is fast enough for this. For this reason, I place all my appointments in Outlook then print out the next 4 days on one sheet of paper to carry around and scribble on.

I also follow some of Mark Forster’s principles to manage my time. In particular I try to clear all of yesterday’s email and post in one sitting every day and I use a countdown timer to work in 10 minute blocks on tasks I feel a lot of resistance to.

Q: Have you had any mentors, books or people who have influenced you?

JW: Barbara Sher, queen of the scanners. I went on her Scanner’s retreat in Corfu last October which was excellent. Also Barbara Winter (“Making a Living Without a Job”), Julia Cameron’s “The Artist’s Way” and the UK career coach Nick Williams. Oh, and the excellent Myers-Briggs based careers book “Do What You Are” – the book that first showed me that it was my love of ideas that drove everything I did.

I’ve had the pleasure of meeting many of my heroes. When you pick the right heroes, they’re surprisingly accessible.

Q: What advice or tips would you share with our readers?

JW: It’s a lot less hard work to make a living from something you love doing (as long as it has some value to others) than by doing something you don’t enjoy just because it has a more obvious route to income. Be wary of “good career moves!"

My career has worked best for me when I followed my interests within the business world and worked least well for me when I chased status or money at the expense of enjoyment. My recent decision to focus on my coaching career should be an interesting test of this.

I also recommend my monthly newsletter of help and advice for scanners, dilettantes and other freestylers at www.coachingcreativity.net. I’m biased of course but it’s really quite good (and that’s as effusive as we Brits get!) I’m currently organising scanners and dilettantes to meet up in the UK, so if you’re over my way check out www.scannercentral.co.uk for the details.

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John Williams is a life coach based in London and works with local clients in his home or with others anywhere in the world by phone or Skype. You can contact him by going to http://www.coachingcreativity.net/contact.

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© 2006 Susan Henderson, All rights reserved.