TA #94:☀️ When you need to let go of goals; Pumpkin Spice brake pads are back!

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Welcome to the 94th issue of Total Annarchy, a fortnightly newsletter by me, Ann Handley, with a focus on writing, marketing, living your best life. THANK YOU for being here! I appreciate you.

Boston, Sunday, August 29, 2021

What’s up, Cocoa Puff?

Before I was out of grade school, I’d set 3 goals for my life. I wanted:

A house with a second floor
A two-car garage
An in-ground swimming pool

If I had all three of those things, I thought to myself, I’d be rich! Rolling in it! A success! In every way!

The pool especially.

I imagined myself working it into my grown-up conversations: Might you enjoy a swim right now?

Or: I’d be delighted to bring your drink out to the pool if you’d like to make yourself comfortable there.

Why I spoke like a hostess at a country club... I don’t know.

But that’s the voice I used when I imagined grown-up me entertaining in a house with a second floor, a garage, and in-ground swimming pool.

Eventually I grew up. My goals went beyond second floors and garages. But somehow the pool thing persisted.

* * *

I grew up the youngest in a family of 6, in a small rectangle of a ranch house with a minuscule, flat backyard.

Three bedrooms. One bathroom. For 6 people.

I repeated the 6-people detail because you can imagine the fights. The banging on the door. COME ON YOU’VE BEEN IN THERE FOREVER.

It’s not an exaggeration to call it a shoebox: It was literally shaped like one. We lived snug as a pair of new shoes nestled in tissue paper, two to a bedroom.

I visited friends who lived in Capes and colonials and split-levels... places I thought palaces compared with our shoebox house.

They had room to move. Second floors that weren’t basements. Garages that housed cars and bikes and sleds for the winter.

Back home, I’d sometimes squint at the profile of our little house and imagine it with a second floor. I’d look at the head of the driveway and frame a pretend garage with pretend 2x4s. I parked my bike against the far garage wall, as if there were actually a garage wall there.

Then I’d pretend-dig an imaginary in-ground pool in the flat backyard—which wasn’t anywhere near large enough to hold a pool. But I’d plot it out anyway, laying sticks in the grass.

The pool was the showpiece—the most important part of my imaginary renovations.

Others might have garages and second floors. But hardly anyone in my suburban town had an in-ground pool.

* * *

And guess what...? A zillion years ago, I did it! I bought a house with an in-ground swimming pool! It has a second floor and a garage, too. But the pool! There was a POOL.

It didn’t matter that the pool was already old—a deep hole in the ground with crumbling decking and a filter that... kind of worked?

That’s okay. The renovations were real this time. New decking. New filter. The buzz of chainsaws pruning the trees that kept dropping their tree trash (acorns, dead leaves) into the deep end.

We bought the house in September. And by April the kids were jumping off the diving board.

That proved to be a dumb move—April was waaaay too early for swimming in greater Boston, where spring weather is an unreliable jerk. Days later I watched snow blanketing the new decking.

Whatever. I had a pool at last.

It filled me with joy and accomplishment. It was fun to think of myself as a person who owned a swimming pool. (I can bring your drink out to the pool if you’d like to make yourself comfortable there.)

* * *

At least it did that first spring. Filled me with joy, I mean.

But then something started to snuff that joy out. Maybe it was the pool itself, pouring all of its 10 thousand gallons directly onto Joy, dousing Joy until there was none at all. (The work. The maintenance. What a pain in the patootie the pool turned out to be.)

Maybe it was the morning I pulled a mangled baby bunny out of the filter.

Maybe it was the crazy-short pool season in Boston.

Maybe it's because I slowly realized how much I don't like to swim.

But I’m making excuses. The problem wasn’t the work, the bunny, the weather, or my lack of love for swimming.

The problem was once I reached a goal... I couldn’t remember why I wanted it in the first place.

* * *

What do you do when the goal you set for yourself turns out to be all wrong?

Do you keep going... hoping you’ll settle into your goal, your wish, your dream?

Do you push onward... because it's too late to course-correct? Because it's too expensive to undo? Or because you're in too deep? (<-- Pool reference LOL)

Do you ignore the nagging feeling that this isn't right, because isn’t this what you wanted? Isn’t this who you are?

Said another way:

You spend a lot of time in pursuit of something you're certain will fill you up. But at what point do you acknowledge that you really hate swimming?

* * *

A few weeks ago a backhoe drove over the lawn, positioning its massive claw over the massive hole, and tore the pool out of the ground as precisely as an escargot fork lifts a snail.

It was violent. But also quicker than I expected it would be. By that afternoon, dump trucks were already bringing in the final loads of dirt to fill the hole.

To fill or not to fill. I’d agonized for more than a year. My imagination again: Not a yard with a pool, but a yard without one.

* * *

It sounds dumb now, how much I agonized about a stupid swimming pool.

But this wasn’t just letting go of a pool. I was letting go of something I’d defined myself by for decades.

How do you finally know when the dream job you worked for isn’t what you thought it would be?

>> When the dream relationship no longer feeds you?

>> When the anticipation doesn’t match the outcome?

>> How do you have the courage to admit it to yourself?

Filling in a pool doesn’t exactly require “courage.”

Or does it? Doesn’t it take courage to let go of what’s not working, so you can make room for what might?

To acknowledge a truth (I really do hate swimming), so that you can bury it for good and realize that it opens up possibilities you didn’t realize were there.

* * *

Late August always makes me a little melancholy. Time is closing in on the year. It's the "night of the year," as Thoreau wrote, "full of warnings of its lateness, as is life."

Oof. So depressing. But also: A reminder to fix what's not working for you anymore. And permission to let it go. August is perfect for that. (Way better than January.)

By the next day, the place where the swimming pool had been could have been anything: A garden. A bocce pit. A dog park. (Augie suggested that one.)

I had thought the filled-in pool would look like blight. A scar from something that once was vibrant and alive.

But it looks neither blighted nor scarred.

It looks instead like new possibility.

* * * * *

EVERYBODY WRITES WRITING TIP OF THE FORTNIGHT

Write people and their stories directly into your copy and content:

▶Use you. (Count the number of yous in a piece. If you run out of fingers... you're doing great.)
▶Quote people directly, using their actual words.
▶Help your readers recognize themselves in your writing: People don't care about "scaling customer interactions"; they do care about "getting the exact kind of real-time insights."

More tips on writing humans into your work and eliminating “selfish sentences” here.

QUICKIES

What happens when you ungate your content. The story of what happened when one agency ungated everything on its site.

Update 👉👉👉 It’s been six months. What’s happened since then? An update from the agency itself.

The real genius of the Starbucks Pumpkin Spice phenomenon is this exact marketing approach that any brand can use.

Source: John Cole on Twitter

“Big Brands Experiment with NFTs”: How? And more importantly... Why? This is a great analysis of a brand-new trend by Jeremiah Owyang. My favorite part is when he makes the case for why innovation matters in Marketing:

Marketing can spend on proven channels—so why waste resources? Brands can easily execute search ads and display ads and get a calculated proven rate of return. Why innovate in such new waters when the mass market isn’t ready? The obvious answer is to be first, learn from innovation techniques, and plant a flag for future endeavors. Oh, and PR, yes, the PR.

NEW JOB ALERT!

MarketingProfs is looking for a smart, fun, creative copywriter with 1-2 years' experience. If you're still reading... wanna work with us? Details here.

WIN $25 in $WORD

From time to time in this newsletter I will give you an opportunity to win $WORD, my cyber currency that’s worth real money. It’s priced at $5.54 as I write this.

How to win this week:

Share a standout piece of Marketing Writing you read recently. It could be a clever turn of phrase. A perfect product description. A fun script. Something that made you laugh, something you loved.

Maybe you wrote it, maybe someone else did. Doesn’t matter—as long as it resonated with you.

Hit Reply and share standout wiring for a chance to celebrate Marketing Writing AND possibly win $WORD.

The best 5 entries will win $25 each in $WORD.* I might even feature the standout sentences in a future issue.

DEPARTMENT OF SHENANIGANS 😲

Write drunk, publish sober is the famous Hemingway adage. What happens when you write drunk, publish drunk?

Or: What happens when a bottle of 2018 Turnbull Cabernet Sauvignon responds to a negative Yelp restaurant review at 5 o'clock in the morning?

(Thanks,Jen Smith, for the link.)

LOVE LETTERS

Shoutouts from around the Internet.

💌 To Neil Patel for including my Instagram account in his recommended Instagram accounts to follow.

💌 To Ashley Faus, writing in MarketingProfs, for her kind words about my approach to thought leadership.

💌 To Marc Eglon at Letterlist for including this newsletter in his roundup of the 10 best marketing newsletters.

💌 To Rock Content for adding Everybody Writes to its list of must-read marketing books.

* * *

Thanks for reading this far. Thanks for your kindness and generosity. Thanks to everyone who's asked about my shoulder. We're getting there.

Stay safe. Stay sane. Start wearing a mask again.

I'll be back on September 12.

P.S. If you like this newsletter and want to support it, you can:

1) buy a book.
2) Get yourself some $WORD coin. (Read more about creator coins here.)
3) Simply forward this newsletter to a friend with an invitation to subscribe right here: www.annhandley.com/newsletter.

SPECIAL THANKS to AWeber for being the provider of choice for Total Annarchy. If you are looking to up your email game, give them a shout.

Ann Handley is the author of Everybody Writes and other books.
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Ann Handley

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TA #94:☀️ When you need to let go of goals; Pumpkin Spice brake pads are back!

Older messages

TA #93: 💪 How to Build a Daily Writing Habit [Template]; Seeking Forgiveness

TA #92: 🍫 The most powerful word in writing; Junior Mintapalooza

TA #91: 🚀 How to do a content launch right. Plus: the hottest meme of the week... but make it marketing.

TA #90: 🔥 The Cure for Burnout; Standout Sentence of the Week

TA #89: 🗣️ Public Speaking for Introverts (And Those Who Forget How to Be Around People); My Writing Framework

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