Why I Don’t Have an Online Coaching Button
The magic of the internet is that it can connect strangers through a virtual world. Search boxes help find commonality and mutual interests. What is even more encouraging is that people are interacting. There is far less fear in speaking up and reaching out. Top down worship is being replaced with tangential talking. The power of the regular person is incredibly exciting.
As we realize that we have something good to share, we start putting it out there. We begin investing in ourselves. We start blogs and social media accounts. The goal is to add to the conversation and have something to contribute.
You keep listening to what needs to be said and crafting what is you’re trying to say, and one day, seemingly out of no where, the universe answers back:
Actual first email and response. The start of a beautiful friendship.
I’d just spent $600 upgrading from blogger to a professional wordpress site, and for a brief moment, I wondered if this was the return I was seeking on my investment. Should I be doing online coaching? As quickly as it came, I pushed the thought out the window and locked the door. Hodor would have been proud.
I realized that the money, time, and effort that I put into this is really my accountable means of self-improvement. When it looked better I treated it better. I spiffed it up not to ready it for a sale, but with hopes that by doing so it might not get looked past so much. Wishful thinking or not, the people started to come.
This platform allows me to keep thinking, noticing, and problem solving, and I love doing these things. The questions people ask give me clarity and focus. It is symbiotic. Work born out of loneliness and isolation meets its helpful, harmonious purpose.
Like poor Feivel singing Somewhere Out There, I created this thing because I was looking for people. I wanted to give something away but didn’t know who might want it or where to find them. For a long time it seemed like a lost cause. I continued, though, because writing helped develop different ways to communicate and understand. When you live inside your head, you don’t practice how to convey those thoughts; it’s enough to simply conjure and experience them.
I don’t have an online coaching button because I don’t think I can offer folks anything more there than I can with the contact button. I dislike the way ‘coach’ assigns hierarchal separation. I have had the loveliest, most thought-provoking conversations with people I’ve never met, and it all started with a simple hello. If you’d like to talk, I’d be happy to interact with you. I won’t be your coach, but it’s very possible I’ll end up being your friend.