“Secretly productive?” I can almost hear some of you thinking. “Why would I want it to be a secret?” Isn’t being busy and productive something to brag about? Well sometimes. Personally, I hate it when too many people or the wrong people know what I’m up to.
I know where this comes from. I’m an adult only child who had rather smothering, over involved parents. Every time I turned around there they were — nosing into every book I read; quizzing me about my friends — who they were; who their parents were; what their ethnic background was; what kind of grades they got. I could go on. They would read my diary. When puberty showed up they would inspect me and comment on the changes. At night after we all went to bed I could hear them discussing me. I always felt under observation and kind of ashamed of everything I did, even though looking back now, what I was doing was just normal bookworm kid and teenager stuff. I’m so thankful I grew up when I did, the seventies. I can’t imagine the surveillance they would have indulged in if I was a kid these days.
Thankfully I’m not a kid anymore, but I still don’t like people nosing into my projects or my business experiments until they’re well underway and I have some momentum built. I find if I talk about what I’m doing too early in the process it dissipates my energy and I feel much less inclined to work on it. It feels like…
