Author: J Cleveland Payne

You are on a ship in the middle of the ocean, and that ship is taking on water.

You escape to a lifeboat with others from the ship and load up as many essentials to survival as you can get your hands on.

And now the lifeboat is taking on water.

Change the scenario of this dire situation. This is not a ship and a lifeboat, but the world around you and your mental state of mind. It is not a fair or equitable comparison but stick with me for just a few lines more, please.

In the lifeboat, you can toss aside as much excess weight as possible. Still, if you are tossing random boxes and crates, you are libel to toss out emergency rations or medicine or emergency flares necessary for your survival.

For your mental state, you, too, can toss aside the things that are bogging you down, but not without discretion. And because you’ll start seeing that ‘things’ often equates to people . . . you can see just how deep it can get to save yourself.

You can only jettison so much ‘dead weight’ before you put yourself in a worse position.

Agree? Disagree? Email me at jclevelandpayne@gmail.com to discuss.

Thank you for reading this posting.

I hope you are doing well, and like to think of you as a friend.

But if I am as successful in getting the exposure for this posting as I would like, chances are I don’t actually know you personally. Therefore, I don’t intimately know your circumstances.

I do know I am posting this in the third quarter of the year 2020, and life has been totally upended for just about all of us.

Despite how dire your situation is (and some of us are living through horrible conditions right now), it could always be worse.

And you can help make it worse by focusing on just how bad your situation currently is, and not how lucky you are that you at least have what you do possess. In turn, you can make it better by believing and working toward just how good it possibly could be.

First, learn to be content with your current state, but never stop there (even in good times). Never dismiss the potential heights you have yet to achieve.

Having issues with gratitude in the face of suffering? Email me at jclevelandpayne@gmail.com and we can discuss.

An extremely useful lesson on work-life balance can be found by watching old videos on YouTube.

Specifically, New Edition’s ‘Count Me Out.’

This music video from 1985 has default lead singer Ralph Tresvant planning a night out with his girlfriend. The rest of the group pre-Bell Biv DeVoe (Ricky Bell, Michael Bivins, and Ronnie DeVoe. Bobby Brown had left to go solo by this time) are complaining about this date ruining their plans of hanging out (going to the movies, then to the park to play a little ball ‘til it gets dark).

Tresvant tells his boys that ‘you’ll have to count me out,’ since he wants to spend time with his girlfriend.

Tresvant has two competing priorities in this scenario: his usual routine of hanging out with the fellas and the special occasion of hanging out with his girl.

How does this represent work-life balance? Let’s start with a statement that we should all get behind: it is all life, and there is no actual balance.

You are a being with infinite possibilities of outcomes and finite amounts of time, energy, and resources to work with. Some are more fortunate than others to have ‘work’ be fulfilling and lucrative. Some are more fortunate to have life being fulfilling and pleasurable. I would bet that the bulk of us are stressed by both the work aspects and the life aspects, but without enough worth, you can’t live very much life.

If rolling the dice on a date which could lead to more, and at least mean a change in pace to playing ball with his boys, is worth it, it is worth not playing ball with the boys for at least one night even if the boys can’t find alternative activities for themselves to stay occupied.

If something is important enough to you, you will make time for it. If you have to work to pay bills, you will find time for it. If you have relationships that need to grow, you will find time for them. If you have a hobby or side hustle that you want to expand on, you will have to find time for them.

You will have to count yourself out of a few things to gain traction in a few other things. The balance will never be attained, but balancing all those aspects are crucial.

Agree? Disagree? Don’t get the connection? Talk to me at jclevelandpayne@gmail.com.

Very few of the people who call identify themselves as a part of your fans will put forth extraordinarily little effort beyond basic to support your work.

This is normal.

Massive fan action for a particular artist comes from an extremely massive fan base. U2 can fill a football stadium with people willing to overpay for the right to say they were there when. Getting your immediate circle of friends to show up and pay a cover charge to fill a good-sized bar seems like an impossible task in comparison.

You shouldn’t worry about it. You will, but you shouldn’t. This is a point in the journey where the journey has to be the reward you receive for the hard work you put in.

Having your own trouble getting your fans to do fan things for you? Let’s talk about at jclevelandpayne@gmail.com.