choosing to grow

WORDS For Sale

As any writer or artist knows, talent alone doesn’t always lead to success. The ability to sell oneself is the difference between those of us who starve for our craft and those of us who have found a way to stand solidly in a fickle market.

I may know how to write, but I suck at selling.

Were it not for my generous, patient, and encouraging husband, I would have been a very hungry writer. Either that or I would have had to get a “real” job. Without his backing, years ago I would have had to abandon marriage books with meagre profits, agented non-fiction proposals that still sit on publishers’ desks, novel drafts, blogposts, Instablogs, and Facebook posts. With him I’ve been able to piddle and hone my craft because I have never had to rely on selling anything while I did it.

It is time for me to step up my game.

The seasonal businesses that have fed our family and financed every part of our lives are all dependent upon crowds of people. The entertainment company where my husband has been employed for over twenty-five years, (also employing other members of our family for nearly eight years) hosts sixteen days of partying for tens of thousands of people and hundreds of employees. Not exactly the essential type of gathering encouraged or dependable in time of pandemic. We also both coach sports teams. Also life-as-we-used-to-live-it-but-now-we-don’t-know-when-we’ll-do-that-again activities. Compounding all of this is the fact that we are in mid-build for our next adventure…yet another business built on events, gatherings, and celebrations for crowds of folks.

We always thought we weren’t putting our eggs in one basket, but we also never imagined that groups of people who would normally and happily congregate in any one of the nests we’ve built would be rightly concerned about that dangerous decision. For a time, it makes sense that the baskets we’ve always relied upon will stay empty and it’s time to build a new one.

It is an #endoftheroad unlike any we’ve ever navigated. I have to do something while we wait it out.

Choosing to Grow has pulled me out of desperately stagnant places before, and I am hopeful it will happen again. I have no grand illusions that this venture, all on its own, will supplant all that has been paused, but it is an offering I can make right now with the one thing I’m prepared to do.

I am fairly certain my marketing techniques will not include shameless plugs, because like I mentioned before, I suck at selling, but I do think I’ll post announcements about projects I’m doing and I’ll offer invitations to let me partner for meaningful gifts for loved ones where words I can offer might help.

A few ideas percolating right now can be found on the newly created Custom Gifts tab on my website. Other possible projects for sale will include:

Personalized Poems
Picture/ poem/ prayer prints
Video montages
Postcards
Greeting Cards
Photo magnets

If you know of anyone looking for a unique gift, please send them my way.

In addition to these creative offerings I will also engage in more freelance writing opportunities, rewrite Choosing to Grow: Through Marriage (The Pandemic Edition), seek online or in person speaking opportunities and keep plugging on my novel revision.

I made a decision to Choose to Grow through my life and now, more than ever, is the time to do just that.

Meagan Frank

As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kinds of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives. Henry David Thoreau

Choosing to Grow has dominated my life. As I knelt on the cold linoleum of a rented bathroom sixteen years ago, my prayer of desperation yielded the instruction to Choose to Grow. I’ve pursued that ever since. What CTG means is I never settle for blind acceptance of someone’s idea. I investigate, deconstruct and analyze continually to see what growth is possible and what noticing I should entertain.

To be honest, growing started in the dark recesses of my mind long before I realized it was aiming my shoulders to find blossom at the end of this road.

From a deep interest in Thoreau’s instructions for Civil Disobedience at Waldon Pond, to journal entry reflections written prior to 9-11, through the first book I researched, and because of all the moves we endured oscillating between still quiet and robust busyness in our married life, I’ve sensed this house would be our landing spot and our legacy project would be The Park.

Now that we are here, I’m more challenged than ever to allow space for the thoughts that will tread deep paths in my mind.

This Week’s Growth

It is Earth Day 2020. Fifty years since its inception and smackdab in the middle of a contentious and deadly pandemic. What began as a Wisconsin senator’s launchpad for environmental activism has proven to be a chasm in today’s political climate. It’s one more thing people have decided to fight about. Many have become far too frustrated to sit still for a second, look at the world literally in their back yards and attend to the plants, or the weeds, or the birds and animals that work to exist there- even when a deadly virus mandates it. Finding satisfaction in the simple is not the way of our American life and especially not our stay-at-home resistance.

An increasing number of people prefer to fight. Joining causes and raising voices that pit science against beliefs and responsibilities against freedoms. I stand firmly between the contrasts, contemplating all of it.

Fuel for my thinking this week came in both a book and a movie. The book Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World by Adam Grant has challenged me to stay courageous in the ways I chafe at societal norms. I also found plenty of food for thought watching the movie, The Biggest Little Farm, about natural, organic and co-existent farming that is an actual place with actual awe-inspiring growth.

My husband and I are spending this down time better laying plans for The Park. We want to make use of the landscape for the enjoyment and enrichment of all people able to visit. We want to encourage a gentle balance between the natural tendencies of the land to grow and people’s recreation on it. We have adopted a business model of Just Enough. Just enough visitors to keep the resources abundant. Just enough money to keep the business viable and the employees well paid. Just enough profit to make regular charitable contributions to those around us who need it. Just enough scheduling that there is balance between work and recreation for our family too.

Today is not a political day for me. To be honest, every single day here at the end of the road is Earth Day. Especially now that I have time to observe the spring version of this property, I am compelled by the life that struggles to bloom, emerging through decaying layers that were yielded before the winter snow buried them. I’m distracted by the return of birds to nests and the cyclical rhythm of next-generation-eagle-pairing. I am not an activist, but I guess I will claim I am an environmentalist because the world around me is too fascinating to disregard.

Here are today’s Earth Day postcards from the end of the road.

New sprout sidled up next to last year’s dead root.

A pair of geese chatting about the wind-driven waves and the direction they intend to fly away from me.

A discarded fishing reel from over fifty years ago…one of the trash items collected for Earth Day.

Budding trees are subtle, but incredible when observed up close.

May this Earth Day provide at least a moment of contemplation and fertile ground for your choice to grow too.

Meagan Frank

Meagan Frank

Author. Speaker. Coach.

Where’d You Grow Wednesday? Into My Writing Business Britches

Where’d You Grow Wednesday? Earth Day at the End of the Road

This Week’s Growth

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This Week’s Growth

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