For Richard

Friend, Coach, Consultant, Teacher or Salesman?

Coaches are trained to refrain from having an opinion, to avoid asking leading questions and not to use their personal experience. It’s a big ask, it takes months of training to achieve, and there are times when those forbidden things are exactly what is needed.

I write books for personal pleasure. I am a one-finger typist. I peck out the words on my keyboard and slowly, ever so slowly, the sentences grow into paragraphs. It’s a labour of love that reminds me of the first years of being a parent. There are many late nights of key-tapping, struggling to get the words onto the page before exhaustion hits my eyes and forces me to surrender to a brief sleep.

Wrapping my writing around a regular workday, an hour before and an hour after, makes for long days and short nights. Tiredness builds to exhaustion and yet the desire to write, to put dreams and ideas onto the page, never falters. Until it does.?

Holding a colic-stricken infant in my arms, I wonder what parental trap I have fallen into, yet I persevere because I must. This is my job, my choice.

Staring at the half-finished chapter in the middle of the book, I wonder what passionate snare I have made for myself, yet I continue because I am the only one who can write this book.

It was in that state, let’s call it ‘Howling from the Bottom of a Self-made Pit’, I meet up with Richard, a friend and a coach, for a drink and a walk.

Being a good friend, Richard asks about my writing. Bless him. I moan and complain about the effort of writing asking more than I have left in me. But I never say I want to quit. Richard notices and switches to coach-mode. It’s okay, it’s what we do for each other, we offer coaching support.?

Richard asks, “How dearly do you want to finish the book?”

I reply, “I am determined to get through it, but…?”

Richard steps over the but. He asks, “What do you need to finish the book?”

“A secretary, someone to write down my ideas as fast as I come up with them,” I grin my reply, certain that Richard is not going to volunteer for the job.

Richard takes out his smartphone, selects an app and waves the microphone end of the phone at my mouth, like an? interviewer.?

“And if you had a secretary, what would you say?” he asks.

I babble something about what I wanted to include in the unfinished chapter. When I pause, Richard pulls back his phone, taps the app and asks for my email. I remind him of it and seconds later, I hear the familiar peep from my phone announcing the arrival of Richard’s email. I click to open it and see, to my astonishment, my words neatly typed in a text doc.

Had Richard asked me for a monthly subscription for that app, I would have leaped at the chance. Luckily, he was a friend and he showed me the app he had been using for my miraculous delivery from the pit.?

“I have that on my phone!” I tell him. I open it and give it a try. It works.

Had you been living nearby, during the next few months you would have seen me outdoors walking and talking to myself, pouring out my ideas into my smartphone secretary, running back to the office to alternately scrutinise and admire the notes my secretary had taken.

Reflections

To begin with Richard was a friend, then he switched to being a coach. When I said I needed a secretary he knew he had the answer (at least a strong contender) in his pocket. I know Richard enjoyed teaching me about that app. We both have the urge within us to share what we know. His demonstration was clear, he had solved my problem. Had Richard chosen to be more of a salesman, he would have made the sale but risked our friendship.