Wiggling Toes

What I did with my 2024

In the “Note at the End” for yesterday’s Wordslinger Podcast episode, I talked a bit about how 2024 is wrapping up just 30 seconds or so after it started.

So maybe that’s an exaggeration. But it feels true. I distinctly remember opening my eyes on a new year, excited about the prospects ahead, and then I blinked and... here we are.

I remember when I was a kid, the years stretched out like taffy, slow and tedious to chew. Getting from one end to the other was a slog, and I couldn’t wait from the next summer break, the next birthday, the next Thanksgiving, the next Christmas. None of it could move fast enough.

I don’t know when the dial got turned, but somewhere along the road of my life everything sped up. The accelerator hit the floor, the brakes were cut, and me and everyone else I ever thought of us young to the point of immortal found ourselves hurtling forward fast enough that we’re seeing stars whizz by in streaks.

Despite the speed, though, somehow so much happened over the past year that I have to pause to think it through, to consider and reflect.

This time last year I was the CEO of a book marketing company. That had been the big end-of-year announcement of 2023. After nearly a decade as the face of indie book publishing giant Draf2Digital, I was stepping up into a whole new role.

By March of 2024, I would step right back down again.

What happened?

Well, no one thing, really. But let me start by saying that there was nothing all that negative about it, and there are no regrets. Just a difference in vision, between me and the company’s founder. A difference in direction. It became clear, pretty early, that what I had planned wasn’t going to gel with what he wanted, and so we decided it was best for everyone—me, him, the business, the author community itself—to move on. So... we did.

I had no idea what would come next, but I decided to put all my energy into going back to writing and publishing full time. That, and creating other things—podcasts, YouTube videos, stuff like that. I had public speaking engagements lined up. I took on hosting duties for various shows. I doubled down on writing content like this, to you, each week.

It was out of this soup of discovery and exploration that the Wordslinger Podcast got its reboot. This show, which I’d started hosting and producing back in 2013, had been on a four-year hiatus thanks to the events of 2020, when my workload at Draft2Digital got out of hand to ridiculous levels. I hadn’t realized it at the time, didn’t realize it until later, but I was burning out quick with the new workload. At that time, I pulled together a brand new podcast and livestream (Self Publishing Insiders with Draft2Digital), handling all the finer details from scheduling guests to building the show, running livestreams, producing the podcast afterward, managing multiple feeds and multiple hiccups and multiple everything. And the decision, at that time, was that we would do that show every single day—which we did, for nearly four months solid.

I should probably mention that at that time Kara and I were full time van lifers. Which mean that every day I had to find some place with decent wifi and a podcast-friendly environment, sometimes in the middle of literal nowhere. And I had to run all of this while maintaining my regular marketing director duties, my writing career, and my own ongoing podcasts.

I swung this for three years. Did great, I think. Did phenomenal, if I really look at it.

And then I burned out.

Big flame. Reduced to ash. Hit with so much anxiety and dread there were...

[Ok, this next part, maybe I should issue some sort of trigger warning. One of those “if you or someone you know is experiencing severe depression or dark thoughts, please seek the help of a professional counselor.” I don’t want my story to trigger some sort of PTSD.]

...moments when I prayed to die.

I wasn’t suicidal. Never have been. It’s not in me. Instead, I was ok with dying. As in, I had no compulsion to step out in front of a bus and end things, but if a bus happened to jump the curb and take me out... well... I would have welcomed it.

That’s no way to live.

That sort of thing really came to a head toward the middle of 2023, and honestly it was part of what prompted me to make a major career change. Why I figured becoming the CEO of a company in the same industry would do the trick, that’s a mystery for the ages. But I went that route. No regrets.

For 2024, though, I was looking for a new perspective. I needed some rest, I now realize. I needed to step away, as much as I could. And somehow, despite me, the year became that for me. A year of rest, recovery, restoration.

Part of the problem of burning out, though, is that getting back to my “former glory” was grueling. And, worse, because this thing that used to come so easily to me—my writing—that used to bring me so much joy, that has always been such a tremendous part of my identity... because this was now hard and even painful for me... that spiral of anxiety and depression flared up again. Now fueled by an extra twist of an existential knife, in the form of “so, you failed at being a CEO, too, huh?”

I used to sit down and knock out anywhere from 5,000 to 10,000 words in a sitting, and never even blinked about it. I once wrote a 60,000 word novel in a single 18-hour day. I’ve cranked out 10,000 word novellas while in ine at Disney World.

And suddenly, I couldn’t write my name without feeling like I was going to die.

Everything I knew about myself, everything I’d ever felt was purely me, was gone. Out of reach, at least. Hidden on the other side of razor wire surrounding a mine field dozed in flesh eating bacteria. Getting back there was going to take some effort.

So saying that 2024 was purely rest and recovery and restoration... that’s... not quite accurate. Not quite the full story.

I read recently about a guy who suffered a stroke, induced by stress after losing his wife. The stroke kind of swiss-cheesed his brain, caused him to have some memory issues. It also caused him to lose contact with his legs—he couldn’t walk, couldn’t even stand. The doctors told him this was a permanent condition. A “learn to live with this new reality” condition.

Here he was, suddenly alone, grieving the loss of his life mate, going through something that literally transformed who he was on a fundamental level, and being told that this was it. This was the “new reality.” It was this, or nothing.

And he refused to accept any of it.

Instead, he started with wiggling a toe. A single toe. He did “lifts,” concentrating all of his effort and energy on making that toe go up. Just up. Then fall back down, and right back up again.

Eventually he added more toes. Then toes on both feet. Then the feet themselves, the ankles, the knees, the hips.

Months. But not quite a year. He did this over and over, fighting to push through the razor wire, to navigate the land mines, the fend off the flesh eating bacteria (metaphorically speaking). And then, after all that fighting, after that slog... he won.

He walked. No cane. No assistance. Nothing to lean on or rely on except is own will. And then step, step, walk.

After seeing that story, it occurred to me that for a lot of 2024, I was wiggling toes. I started the year at a deficit for word count and productivity. I did release a book—The Forgotten Rune—and it did great. People said they loved it. But here’s a confession... I cheated. I had written a large chunk of that book in 2022, and it wasn’t even originally intended to be a Kotler book. But toward the end of 2023, I knew I needed to release something, to keep some money coming in, to keep my career alive, and frankly just to keep me feeling like a writer. So I dusted that book off, made some edits and changes, and finished it. That was a bit of a slog, too. That was wiggling a toe.

Since then I’ve been working on another book, one I’m doing with JD Barker. It’s one that I’m doing in a very different way, starting with an outline (which I never do, so that created some initial anxiety). And I’m also taking my time with it (which probably irks JD, but is so much more necessary for me than I can convey). I’m “doing it right,” spending more time on the craft of it than I usually would, but also just using it to pace myself. Wiggle more toes.

Things are picking up. That’s what I’ve noticed. The pace of the writing, just like the pace of this year, has increased. I’m wiggling ankles and knees, all of a sudden.

I’m starting to come back to myself, all of a sudden.

I do find myself wishing this was going faster. But fast isn’t always the best way. Better, I now realize, is to do things at their natural pace. Do things at the pace that allows you to experience them and be a part of them and to flow with them, rather than force them. Rather than rush to the end, so you can call it done, so you can check a box.

And, ironically, because I am surrendering to this natural pace, I’m finding that pace quickening. I’m finding that the more I allow things to flow without pushing them, the more I make progress. I’m finally back to getting out of my own way.

So... that was my 2024. It’s wrapping up, and I’m not quite where I thought I would be, financially or career-wise. But there’s no denying that this rapid, fast-paced year of rest, recovery, and restoration has brought me full circle back to who I always intended to be. And, in a lot of ways, has made me better at being me.

How about you? What did 2024 do for you? Leave me a comment about the best thing you’re taking away from the whole year.

A NOTE AT THE END

Something I’ve started doing, and which is helping me tremendously, is allowing myself to work with some slack in the line.

I have always used “daily word target” to drive myself to finish these books. And that has always been useful to me. It’s simple math—if I know the books is going to be 80,000 words long, and I want it to be done in 30 days, then I have to write around 2,700 words per day. Easy.

But once I got burned out, it wasn’t so easy anymore. And seeing that number as the target, floating in a little box off to the side of Scrivener, started making me feel so anxious and filled with dread, it robbed me of any enthusiasm or joy for the writing. It made this thing I’ve always loved hard. And that kept me from hitting my numbers.

The solution?

Turn off the number. Stop aiming for a daily word target. At least for the moment.

And instead, just commit to writing something each day.

Fifty words. A hundred. Five hundred. Doesn’t matter. At the end of each day, I need to look back and ask, “Did I write fiction today?” And if I answer “yes,” I win.

I’ve been doing that for a whle now. And here’s the werid thing...

Many days, even most days, I end up writing way more than my old daily word target.

Why? No idea. Except, maybe, it’s just that I took the pressure off. I took the commitment down a few notches. I stopped giving myself a demand, beyond simply doing something. Stopped blaming myself or feeling guilty when I didn’t live up to what it “should” be. And instead, I started celebrating the smallest wins as if they were the biggest.

Is there a lesson in that, for other aspects of my life (and yours?). I thnk so.

Celebrate every small victory, as if it’s the biggest victory of your life. Stop berating yourself for not living up to the big push, the big goal, the massive task list.

Aim for effortless living—not “do nothing, have no ambition,” but instead, “do not strive, simply do what is next.”

It helps. It changes you. It makes you more productive, not less. It blesses you with freedom, from stress and anxiety and guilt.

Live effortlessly, my friends.

And happy new year.