What If The Should Was Right?

I spent time in online networking meeting last week. There were breakout rooms with people I didn’t know and lots of polite listening. In one room I didn’t even get chance to speak at all! Somewhere in the middle of it all, I had a very clear thought.

I still can’t be arsed with this anymore.

Which is useful information, I suppose. I’d gone because I’ve been thinking I need to expand my audience. My Funky Diva Vibes stuff feels exciting and very me. I’ve been making videos that challenge the invisible rules we don’t even realise we’re following, and my online audience is gradually growing.

But I’ve still got three places left on my Sassy Shoes workshop for 5th September. And that’s where things get interesting, because apparently it doesn’t take very long for:

“I’m building a business differently now”

to become:

“OH GOD, SHOULD I BE NETWORKING?”

I’ve spent years networking. I know how to do it. And I actually love meeting the right kind of people. Put me with someone where the conversation flows, we’re bouncing ideas around, laughing, going off on tangents and getting excited about things and I’m in my element.

Put me in a breakout room with a stranger where we both know we’ve got several minutes before the little message flashes up telling us we’re about to be forcibly returned to the main room...Not so much.

There’s nothing wrong with networking, some people absolutely love it and build fantastic businesses that way. I did for a long time. I’m just increasingly sure I’m not one of them. Except when I need sales, then apparently, I’m prepared to reopen negotiations.

Funny how quickly that happens, isn’t it? We can be absolutely certain something isn’t for us until there’s a wobble, then all the old shoulds start sidling back in.

Maybe I should be networking.

Maybe I should be doing more.

Maybe I’m spending too much time creating content.

Maybe the She reels aren’t the right thing to be doing.

Maybe I should stop buggering about making things I enjoy and concentrate on things that directly lead to sales.

The fact that my audience is growing should reassure me, but three empty chairs at my Sassy Shoes workshop is shouting louder than the data.

So, I realised this week there’s a difference between knowing what you want and trusting what you want when you haven’t got proof it’s going to work yet and that’s the tricky bit.

It’s easy to say you’re doing things differently when everything is going swimmingly but much harder when you don’t have the results you want yet. Because that’s when the Sausage Machine clears its throat.

“Ahem. Perhaps we could interest madam in some traditional networking?”

The irony isn’t lost on me. I’ve spent the past few weeks creating content about noticing the things we do because they’re what we think we’re supposed to do.

I’ve been talking about Spot the Squish and Splitting from the Shoulds, doing things in ways that feel more like you.

Meanwhile, there I am, up early, staring at a Zoom screen wondering whether I need to start networking again because that’s what you do when you need bums on seats. You couldn’t make it up.

Although perhaps that’s the point, because Unsausaging isn’t something you complete.

You don’t reach some enlightened state where you’re presented with a certificate confirming you’ll never again question your preferences, people-please, make do or find yourself doing something you don’t particularly want to do because you think you ought to. It’s a practice.

Sometimes you catch yourself mid-squish, that’s Big Unsausaging Energy in its natural habitat. Not some huge, rebellious declaration, sometimes it’s just noticing you’re halfway back towards something you already know doesn’t fit and going: Nah. Not that.

It cropped up elsewhere this week too

On Friday afternoon I had nothing urgent to do, so I went shopping just because I fancied it. I’d seen some pyjamas from Sainsbury’s that said I’m Not a Morning Person and wanted to have a look. (I didn’t get them; they were too twee.)

But what struck me afterwards was how strange that Friday afternoon had felt. I’d had time - the thing I keep saying I want more of. Yet having nowhere I needed to be and nothing urgent I needed to do felt almost decadent. And ‘wasting’ time and money when I knew I needed to make more sales created another little internal argument, part of me still wasn’t entirely convinced I should be using either of them like that. Interesting…

The rest of my week was pretty ordinary

I went to the gym twice and I think it’s starting to make a difference, despite my back flaring up this week. I crocheted, saw friends, made slightly disappointing turkey meatballs. I conquered some tech I’d been avoiding and finally got the whole years’ worth of blogs onto my website. (Reading through them, they’re becoming a sort of accidental memoir of this particular bit of my life.)

On Friday night, twelve of us surprised my friend at a Turkish restaurant wearing masks of her partner’s face for a ‘non-hen’ do. On Sunday I made scones and rocky road for her non-hen-do afternoon tea ahead of their civil partnership ceremony next week. My back was really aching by about eight, so I came home - no staying because everyone else was staying. I’d had enough - another tiny bit of Big Unsausaging Energy.

I also can’t not mention the eclipse this week. We drove to a “viewing point” which turned out to be a lay-by, sat there in 30-odd-degree heat with dodgy car air conditioning and waited nearly an hour for something I wasn’t particularly bothered about seeing in the first place. The eclipse itself was something of an anti-climax.

Perhaps there’s a metaphor in there somewhere, but frankly I think sometimes an underwhelming eclipse in a sweaty lay-by is just an underwhelming eclipse in a sweaty lay-by.

And maybe that’s where this stuff actually happens, not during the big epiphanies but in ordinary weeks.

When you notice yourself doing something you thought you’d stopped doing.

When the thing you want hasn’t happened quickly enough and suddenly all the old ways start looking tempting again.

When you’ve finally got the space, you wanted and discover you’re still learning how to have it.

Would I happily never attend another traditional networking meeting if someone guaranteed me those final three Sassy Shoes places would sell? Absolutely.

Which means networking isn’t actually the question, but trust is.

Can I trust myself enough to keep building things in a way that feels like me when I don’t yet have all the evidence that it’s working?

Can I need more sales without automatically translating that into I need to do more things?

I don’t know yet, those three Sassy Shoes seats are still empty as I write this. And I think that’s important, because it would be very easy to tell this story afterwards, when everything had worked out beautifully. But that’s not where I am, I’m in the bit before that. The bit where I’ve spotted the should and decided I don’t want to follow it, but I don’t yet know whether my alternative is going to work.

Maybe Big Unsausaging Energy sometimes looks like that, no triumphant declaration.

Just catching yourself mid-squish and thinking...Nah. Not that way, then carrying on without knowing exactly where the other path leads.