There are many jobs that people think they want to do, because they want to be the type of person who does that job, despite not having any interest in what that job actually entails. A good example is “owning your own business.” I have met countless people over the years who dreamed of owning their own business, but didn’t actually have a business idea. Naturally, I was curious as to why they liked the idea of owning a business if they were not inspired to, well, start a business. (I notice the same thing with people who want to write a book, but don’t have an idea for a book, and on top of that, hate writing and never do it.) Often, the explanation of the would-be-business-owner boiled down to the fact that they liked the idea of being a CEO, or “being their own boss,” but they weren’t totally sure (or interested in) what it involved. They didn’t actually want to deal with overheard costs, payroll, business strategy, marketing, or quite frankly any of the work that goes into owning a business.
For most of my life, I had the same attitude about throwing big parties.
As I’ve written before, I’ve had a long history of throwing parties—parties that I was hoping would be big and fantastic, but never were. I threw a few good ones which still fell short of my expectations, and a lot of bad ones. (You can hear about this in more detail on the really funny Search Engine episode about my predicament.) My biggest obstacle was getting good turnout (most people just never RSVP’ed at all and seemingly everyone I knew was “out of town” every weekend) but attendance aside, the parties were not as fancy or fun as I had hoped.
But I’m realizing that perhaps it’s not just that I couldn’t throw a big party…but that I didn’t really want to. I wanted to be the type of person who threw big parties. And this is why, at least for now, I’m abandoning this goal—and replacing it with something else.
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