What Can You Really Control at Work?

What can you really control at work anyway? Turns out for us...not that much. We work hard for our clients but they are not always happy. We write books but unless we stand in the aisles of B&N and Borders pushing copies into the hands of the customers we can't actually sell them ourselves. We have a million ideas for articles but unless a magazine is interested they are not seeing the light of day. And often that depends on themes, and ad sales and a bunch of other things not in our control. The latest in the we-can't-control-everything front is our experience trying to get a dramedy off the ground in Hollywood. OK so we are working with kick-ass producers (MediaNation) who have come up with a really cool and fresh concept. As avid TV viewers we know what makes a good show, and this is a good show. We know this instinctively and by the responses to the treatment other people know this too. So what's the catch? Well, there was the upfronts, and then there was the summer, and then there were people excited about it that couldn't get other people excited about it. There was the 'yes, absolutely' meeting that turned into the 'just got signed on to an existing show and I need to pay my rent' call. There are people gagging for it if only we could tweak it a little so it was just like...a show already on television. After a rollercoaster of great calls followed by frustrating ones we have all taken the only approach you can in situations like this...a Zen one. We don't get too excited anymore (debatable) nor do we get too sad. We know this is a great show waiting to happen and we know we have zero control over the when and the how of it. So what can we control really? Turns out not that much. And that's OK.