A New Pair of Glasses
By: Randy Heller
Tags: Freelancing, Clarity, Vision, Professional Development, Seth Godin

As we head into 2020 soon, it seems like a good time to talk about vision.

Growing up, my vision was always 20/20 or better, and it stayed that way throughout my childhood and teenage years. But the thing is, I read a lot of books back then.

Let me emphasize that last statement: I read A LOT of books.

I read them in my room, in the car (no motion sickness for me), in the corner of the kindergarten classroom while all the other kids were playing outside during recess. Sometimes late into the night, under the covers, using a flashlight. Or sitting on the floor at the end of a dark aisle in our dusty little public library.

Then in my teenage years, these things called personal computers came along, and William Shatner convinced me I had to have one. So I talked my parents into buying me a Commodore VIC-20 (later a Commodore 64). And I would spend hours squinting at the monitor, which in my case was a small black and white TV, typing out hundreds of lines of code from a magazine (which I also had to squint to read) in order to make a rudimentary video game.

Then I’d go read some more books.

So it probably shouldn’t have been a surprise that in my early twenties, I started having trouble reading road signs from a distance while driving. Especially at night. When this eventually got to be a problem, I broke down and went to a doctor to get my eyes checked. And of course, they prescribed glasses.

A week later, when my glasses were ready and I went to pick them up, then put them on for the first time, it was rather a revelation. I was amazed at the amount of detail I’d been missing for years without knowing it.

My goal had simply been to be able to read signs from farther away while driving, so that I wouldn’t have to keep leaning over the steering wheel and pressing my face against the windshield. And thankfully (for both me and the other drivers on the road), the glasses did solve that problem.

What amazed me, though, was the crisp edges of things. I distinctly remember walking away from the optometrist’s office to my car, looking at a tree, and saying to myself, “Oh. That’s what a leaf looks like. Crisp. Not blurry.” And in this way, the entire next week for me became a time of wonder and discovery.

As I get older, of course, my eyes get a little worse (no thanks to more reading and more computers, and now cell phones). So each time I go to the eye doctor, which is every few years, they tweak my prescription a bit more, and I get to experience that feeling of wonder all over again. That rediscovery of what the world around me truly looks like. Not the blurry version that I’ve settled for and gotten by with because my vision has started to fail me.

The glasses I’m wearing these days are fine, and yet my vision is still blurry. I can see just fine with my eyes, but the path forward into my future is not so clear. At the beginning of this year, when I re-branded myself as a writer rather than a “digital solutions provider,” it was like putting on a new pair of glasses. I could see the edges of things again. I could feel that sense of wonder again.

Yet now, as the first signs of Christmas show themselves in the stores, I’m not as clear about what the new year will bring as I’d like to be. It’s as if I’m driving down the road, leaning over the steering wheel, trying to make out the words on the signs up ahead, and coming up short.

I’m working on it, of course. From a perspective of learning and gaining confidence (and clients), this year has been wonderful. But it’s left me wanting too. If nothing else, it’s left me wanting for free time. As discussed in my last article, that’s been in short supply. But it’s also left me wanting a clear sense of what my business is and what I want and need it to be.

Unfortunately, it’s not as easy as buying a new pair of glasses.

The equivalent, I suppose, would be a mentor or life coach or business coach. Or maybe just the right self-help book.

Yet for better or worse, I haven’t been lucky enough to meet somebody who I would consider a good mentor candidate in quite a while. As in more than a decade. It seems to be harder to do as one gets older themselves.

As for life and business coaches, the sheer prevalence of them these days has made it hard to take this option seriously. Which, to be clear, is not me saying that there aren’t many wonderful coaches out there. Just that with so many available, I wouldn’t know where to begin making the decision to put my life or career into their hands. After all, it’s not like choosing an internet provider. It’s more about trust, right? I keep thinking one will jump out of the pack at me eventually, and I’ll say, “Yes, that’s the one.” But so far that hasn’t happened.

Self-help books present a similar challenge for me. There are so many of them that I ultimately get paralyzed trying to decide which one to read. And I don’t have a lot of time for reading as it is. People recommend certain ones and loan them to me or buy them for me, and I’ll start one, and I can see why the person liked it, but it doesn’t resonate with me. I don’t see myself in it.

By contrast, have you ever read somebody new, and it feels like a new pair of glasses? I’ve recently experienced this with Seth Godin. He’s somebody who’s been around for quite a while, and who I was peripherally aware of, but never read one of his books until this past June. And then once I did, it was like the skies opened up and I could see the edges of things again. At least from a marketing standpoint.

Since then, I’ve read a second book, have started bingeing his podcast, and I’m fifty-some days into his amazing online marketing seminar. A big part of the appeal of Seth for me has less to do with the new things I’ve learned — of which there are many — than it does with the concepts I’ve read or heard him express that were things already living in my head. That’s a great feeling.

Anyway, this isn’t an article about Seth Godin. I bring him up mainly as an example of when things appear in your life that resonate strongly with you. And when they do, you run to them, because it doesn’t happen all that often (at least for me).

So maybe I do need a business coach. Or a life coach. Or a self-help book. But until one comes along that makes me want to run to him/her/it, I’ll probably continue to get by on my own wits, seeing what I can with the glasses I’m wearing.