Day 35 — The Embodiment Experiment
Permission to be The Worst
Embarrassment is the price of admission. Are you willing to pay the fee?
There’s only one path to mastery and it starts at the same place for everyone: humility and a willingness to be bad — like really, really bad.
What gives me confidence that I may make it yet as a writer? My years spent as a door to door sales person.
The Embodiment Experiment is an ongoing series of Captain’s Logs that document my shift into writing and, more importantly, into becoming more of myself. With no prior experience or formal training, writing has knocked on my door and has asked me to let it in. Reluctantly, I said yes. This series is for anyone who’s answering the quiet call of their own soul and learning to navigate uncharted territory, day by day. Welcome aboard.
While studying at Texas A&M my freshman year, I was curiously and incorrectly registered for a biology class as a liberal arts student. I learned about this door to door sales job then, when someone came to audit the class before it began.
Summer travel opportunity and $10,000 caught my attention.
Hook, line, and sinker, within the week I found myself in an informational that covered the basics about the “internship”, and by the end of the school year I was caravanning with a bunch of other bright-eyed young college-aged optimists on the way to Nashville, Tennessee, where we would be trained on how to sell educational books door to door.
Sales School was grueling. Early and abrasive wake-up routines, racing your peers to be the first one naked in a cold shower, running by foot across Nashville with a thirty-pound book bag, intensive training sessions, and practicing door knocking where the infamous and soon-to-be-in-front-of-us Mrs. Jones and her merciless slamming door awaited.
We hustled hard to be ready for the job that would be greeting us in seven days time. My sales organization and I learned we would be selling in Ohio, of all places. We were pumped — and none of us were truly prepared for the reality that was barreling toward us like a speeding train.
That initial week had its way with me.
A cold front had blown in unexpectedly, and the first several days selling independently were brisk and windy. Silly me, who was used to the heat of a Texas summer, had only brought shorts and short-sleeve polos. Armed only with a 1996 Ford Explorer and an outdated paper map of the county where I’d be selling, I flailed like a fish out of water.
More often than not, I was crying when I knocked on the door, and most people were kind enough to humor me for a chat, casually asking what on earth I was doing while crying at their doorstep.
Some people even tried to donate money but seemed unwilling to trade their cash for a book. Making a sale would have required more dignity, whereas a donation could remain purely in the realm of charity.
Thankfully, as the first week went on, my tears became less insistent.
At this point I don’t think I was trying to sell anyone anything — I was just practicing my ability to knock on the door and stand there long enough to let someone open it. I did become a world-class door greeter by doing so.
My warmth and contentment to simply offer a hello and a “what’s up?” disarmed people. I also learned how to ask where the children of the neighborhood lived without sounding creepy. That skill came in handy. A surprising number of book kids end up on the local news after being mistaken for human traffickers.
Gradually, as my confidence grew, I began to mention that I was selling books — but usually that was the cue it was time for them to shut the door. Those first six days on the book field, I made it my primary job to just get used to talking to people. The books were an afterthought.
It won’t surprise anyone to learn I was the only first-year in my sales organization who didn’t make a single sale that first week. My leaders were surprised that I didn’t quit. They were even more surprised that I showed up to the meeting smiling and somehow… proud of myself.
Usually the first couple of weeks do well to weed out those who regret coming and just want to go home — selling books door to door be damned. Nobody can blame them; the job completely sucks, especially at the beginning when you’re particularly bad at it. Yet somehow, the first week didn’t weed me out.
I stayed.
At one point, because I wasn’t making any sales, I was assigned to shadow a manager, a returning book-seller, in her territory, one county over. She had worked so late into the evening that by the time I was driving home it was already 10:30 p.m. I was absolutely expected to rise and shine at 5:30 a.m. the next morning and work a full day in my own turf.
I made the late-night long-trek home with at least an hour-and-a-half drive ahead of me. Despair and exhaustion won — tears came so hard that I missed a speed limit sign and was pulled over by a cop who was convinced that I was driving under the influence.
Go figure, he called for backup, had me get out of the car, and walked me through every sobriety test in the book. They weren’t able to prove anything, so they let me go, disappointed that I wasn’t drunk and only confirmed insane for having willingly chosen this summer job. Already late, I was now delayed another forty-five minutes arriving home.
If I remember correctly, it was the next morning that I woke up with only four hours of sleep, a head cold, and already shivering before I’d even stepped foot into the shower.
Bordering on illness, I practically passed out when it came time for our first-thing-in-the-morning cold shower. The water in the farmhouse where we were staying chilled me to the bone. Because it came from a well, it was even icier after the cold front had rolled through. Needless to say, it rocked my world.
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Hugging my sad, naked body, teeth chattering like the wind-up walking teeth from Toy Story, I pushed through because I’d made a commitment, and I was determined to honor the promise I’d made to myself, my parents, my leaders, and the team of other booksellers. It was misery personified, wrapping me in the world’s biggest hug, but I persevered.
The second week came, and I set out on my path of talking to people, and wouldn’t you know it — I stumbled across a lovely mom and her young daughter. I still remember the hill they lived on and the patio that looked out across the rolling, verdant green foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. The view was magical, and they were so warm.
They heard me say books. Well, they love books! What a coincidence. They invited me to sit down with them on their patio, where I whipped out the kids’ library from my book-bag, and eagerly demoed the set to someone who was actually excited and willing to check them out. That makes a world of difference, by the way — someone leaning in to look out of curiosity compared to someone wedging their front door between them and the open pages. Best of all, the little girl loved them.
They were my first customers.
The summer continued, and I stuck with the job. Talking to people first, selling books second. Several moments dared me to quit, and multiple times I was pushed to the edge of my mental and emotional limits. But for some reason I was too stubborn, and I chose to keep knocking on the next door — which would always lead me to someone who liked me, liked the books, and was down to buy them. In that order.
When the summer came to a close, while I didn’t have the most sales, I had the most customers. I clocked in at just over one hundred and twenty buyers. So many people had bought books from me that summer that I had to plan for a two-week delivery schedule, compared to just one week for the others, to have enough time to make all the deliveries that awaited me.
Circling back to the present moment and Day 35 of my 40 day experiment. Monday held up a hard and unforgiving reflection of just how new I am to writing. I have no idea what I’m doing. There’s an entire market, method, and madness to all of this, and I am privy to none of it…yet.
This new profession I’ve already declared for myself — “I’m a writer, I’m a writer, I’m a writer” — I’ve practically shouted from the tin roof of my trailer in sweet relief that I finally have a sense of direction and forward momentum.
Just like selling books, the novelty is beginning to wear thin, and the reality of what I’m going to have to do is staring me in the face.
This moment feels like I’ve betrothed myself to a heavily veiled bride, and as I look behind the curtain, ready to embrace and claim my beloved, I understand now why she was shrouded in as much fabric as she was.
I knew that veil was deceptively opaque.
I close my eyes and send up a prayer to God for patience, fortitude, and humility as I accept this fate I so eagerly claimed for myself. Between actively recoiling and continuing to lean in, I think I’ll go ahead and plant a big ol’ wet one right on the lips.
Kissing the hag, I say, “Let’s do this, baby.”
I don’t know how many people I spoke to that first week selling books. Thirty people a day times six is one hundred and eighty. One hundred and eighty people I approached before I figured out how to make sense of selling a book.
How many reps is it going to take me before I make sense of any of this writing business?
How many times am I going to have to send my work into the void before it begins to resonate and gain traction with readers?
How many times can I say I’m a writer and stand by it before reality actually starts to reflect it back to me?
Not unlike asking how many licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Roll Pop, my questions too might call for answers that the world may never know.
What brings me comfort is I’ve done it before. I’ve shown up badly and cluelessly and still somehow managed to get more customers than anyone else in my sales organization.
Time. Commitment. Repetitions. And, most importantly, a willingness to look like a fool.
Show me the person who’s willing to make a complete ass out of themselves and I’ll show you the one who’s going to win. The price of admission is embarrassment. How many times can you show up confidently unconfident?
Julia Cameron, in The Artist’s Way, mentions that her deal with God — Great Creator is her preferred terminology— is, “I’ll take care of the quantity and you take care of the quality.”
My only job right now is to write. As much as I can, as badly as I can, as boldly as I can.
I claim myself as a beginner. In fact, I’m such a beginner that it makes me queasy to think about just how much of an amateur I am. And the only way to get better is by doing it. Over and over and over again.
God, here comes your second deal, right behind Godmother Julia’s —
I’ll take care of the quantity and you take care of the quality.
What’s that you say?
Hot dog! We’ve got a deal!
