{"id":610,"date":"2019-08-01T14:47:36","date_gmt":"2019-08-01T19:47:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.jeanbaur.com\/?p=610"},"modified":"2019-08-02T09:03:25","modified_gmt":"2019-08-02T14:03:25","slug":"turn-your-back","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jeanbaur.com\/wordpress\/?p=610","title":{"rendered":"TURN YOUR BACK"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/jeanbaur.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/turn-your-back.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-612\" src=\"http:\/\/jeanbaur.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/turn-your-back-300x200.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" srcset=\"https:\/\/jeanbaur.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/turn-your-back-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/jeanbaur.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/turn-your-back.jpg 360w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>TURN YOUR BACK<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m the type of person who believes in action. In getting things done. So it&#8217;s odd for me to advocate turning away, leaving something undone, letting things happen. Here&#8217;s how I came to this insight. I&#8217;ve been wanting to write a biography of my great, great, great grandfather John Ireland Howe for almost 23 years, and this past winter I decided that I either had to do it, or forget it. And that I had to put in real effort before making that decision. I knew that something or somethings were holding me back, so I created a schedule. I logged in and logged out. And gradually the book had a life of its own, and I knew that I would stick with it.<\/p>\n<p>But it gets even better. While this was going on, I put my speaking business to the side. But then emails and phone calls came in, asking me if I could speak at a conference or for a staff development session. It amazed me that work came in without a huge effort. I checked my calendar, said yes, and went back to working on the book. Now I have a first draft completed and am lining up readers to help me make sure that I&#8217;ve written it for its intended market: middle school students.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve known for a long time that it&#8217;s important to make an effort and then not make an effort, but this seemed almost magical to me. By freeing myself from procrastination and that nagging feeling that I was neglecting something I wanted to do, I was not only energized, but also had the great fun of seeing work come to me. It feels like grace. So sometimes, I think it&#8217;s a really good idea to turn your back.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>TURN YOUR BACK I&#8217;m the type of person who believes in action. In getting things done. So it&#8217;s odd for me to advocate turning away, leaving&#46;&#46;&#46;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[47,3,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-610","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-burnout","category-jean","category-job-search"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2j73q-9Q","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeanbaur.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/610","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeanbaur.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeanbaur.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeanbaur.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeanbaur.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=610"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/jeanbaur.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/610\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":614,"href":"https:\/\/jeanbaur.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/610\/revisions\/614"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeanbaur.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeanbaur.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeanbaur.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}