Walking the Natural Bridge at Shete Boka National Park (Curaçao)
How to Reinvent Yourself
In November 2022, Dorien Morin-van Dam invited me on to her podcast Strategy Talks to talk about 'How to Reinvent Yourself'. It was a concept I rarely talk about, but something I have personally experienced in my life multiple times. Wether it was changing countries to life, graduating, starting a new relationship, founding a new business, becoming a father, taking a break from social media or just changing my weekly schedule, there have been many occasions drastic changes to my life have been made. Some fared better than others, some have been forgotten, others took years to realize how much a reinvention would shape my life in the future.
The Podcast with Dorien was part sharing knowledge, but also part reflecting on how I've dealt with reinventing myself in different situations in life. One of the questions she asked during our 25 minute talk was whether or not reinventing yourself is a natural proces. For me, in the end, it all comes down to how committed are you to make a shift in your life. The more committed, the more gradual (and for others, the more natural) it feels.
In my current situation, becoming a writer is actually the perfect example. For someone who never like reading or writing until it was no longer an educational obligation, I enjoy writing a lot. Once I start, in general, I don't want to stop. It's fun, it makes me think and it allows me to create. Until it becomes work. Until there is an actual expectation of continuity. And the reason I stop has nothing to do with me no longer enjoying writing, but rather the other things in life I have to sacrifice in order to do so.
Becoming an aspiring writer
Over the past 2 years, I've made writing my first book more a priority. I refuse to say it was my main priority, because if it was, it would have been on the bookshelf already. Interestingly, the idea of writing a book has been there for much longer. The idea came up about 8 years ago, when I was still a college lecturer and there were no books and online marketing and social media that had local case studies of Surinamese companies that could be used as example on a college level. The concept of Social Media in Suriname was born, which resulted in multiple years of making a yearly recap of local Social Media findings that I would share at the beginning of the year. But still, it never really felt worthy of writing a book. Even in 2020, when the idea became serious enough to share it publicly as a goal, there wasn't enough weight to it to act. And then a string of multiple events happened.
The first thing that gave the first push was several different people in different settings encouraging me that my expertise on social media, online marketing and several other topics were not only useful to a local audience, but would be useful for people in other parts of the world as well, making me realize that I had to refocus my writing to a much more global audience. Secondly, I finally pulled the plug enroll to a course by Chris Ducker, which renewed my interest to better define my personal brand, making me really consider what I really wanted to achieve with the brand and wether or not it was time to start an online course. Third, an awesome lunch invite from Mark Schaefer (who recently wrote this awesome blog about his visit to Suriname last October) with several people that I look up to, making me realize that it would I would rather write a book than start an online course (yes, I'm very well aware that these are often combined, but I'm not sure yet whether I'm taking that route). And yes, within 3 hours after that lunch, I signed my first book deal with Self-Publishing School (SPS).
My current reinvention
To be honest. Writing a book isn't easy. During this process, I've gained much more respect for anyone who ever published a book. The biggest challenge for me, finding/making/prioritizing time to actually write. Over the past years, I have learned to change my schedule to spend more quality time with my family, to become more effective at work, educate myself to better understand new technology, even to fully adapt to any Covid-constraints that were thrown my way. Changing my schedule to fit in writing never really happened. For some people, the process is rather easy: Make room [for writing] by removing task that don't provide value and say 'no' to those that come with requests that get you distracted from your goal. For others, like myself (people with a chronic ‘I like everything’ disease), prioritizing between two urgent important tasks and saying 'no' to something you like is the hardest thing to do in the world. So… if I succeed; 'this will be my greatest reinvention yet!'.
JeanlucSR Weekly
A little over month ago, I joined my first SPS writing room in months. The writing room is one of the many perks SPS offers their writers, where writers come together to write for 90 minutes, but also share ideas, issues and personal experiences while writing their book. During this particular writing room I mentioned the value of Substack as a platform for writers to share parts of their book or just ideas worth sharing. Quickly after, I regretted it, as they asked for my Substack link and instantly subscribed, adding the pressure for me to pick up writing weekly updates on Substack, which I haven't done for 2023 (Yes, you've heard that correctly, and yes... we are in May). That also means that I haven’t posted a full length post on Hive for 6 months and on top of that, my last blog entry up my website dates back to 2021. The regret however… slowly faded away. For me, it ended up being a much needed push in the right direction and has helped me in reinventing my approach to writing my book.
So, does this mean the weekly updates are back? Are is this a reinvention which means we start back at one? Or just a one-off thing?
I'll guess we will find out next week.