I wish I had been able to read Professional Troublemaker: The Fear-Fighter Manual by Luvvie Ajayi Jones a year ago, when this whole COVID-19 pandemic was just getting started, and when I found myself trying to muster up the courage to post my first essay on this blog. Instead, in March and April, as everything around the world shut down, and clients called to let me know work had dried up, I found myself sitting in front of my computer, realizing that if a global pandemic that threatened to kill us all wasn’t going to finally get me to be brave enough to start putting my own writing out into the world in a meaningful and risky way, nothing was going to move me to do so. So I sat in front of my computer in March, and then for most of April, still doing absolutely nothing, still unmoved. I mostly took baths and read books about strategic planning, because what better way to procrastinate than to think about strategic planning?
But by mid-April, I’d had enough, and set off to do the scariest thing I’ve ever done (and I’ve done some scary and sometimes stupid things in my life—like free climb 700-foot cliffs, or live in a tent in tornado country, or paddle out into the channel at Waimea Bay on a 15-foot day). And so, in April, when the lockdown had been going on just long enough to look like it wasn’t going to end anytime soon, and it looked like there was a distinct real possibility that we might all die or come close to dying, I pushed “publish” on my first essay, and tried to keep in mind all the other times I’ve come out okay by the skin of my teeth.
The best thing possible happened, which is that nothing happened. I published another essay. Nothing happened for a long time.
Ajayi Jones writes: “One of the things I’ve learned in my journey is how much fear could have stopped me at any moment from doing the thing that changed my life. Or doing the thing that led to me meeting the right person. Or doing the thing that allowed someone else to do the thing that changed their life.”
Nothing happened and I thought about stopping. In fact, I did stop a few times, mostly to just wallow on the couch, watch Outbreak (again), and contemplate humanity’s collective doom. But something kept drawing me back to this place. I don’t think a self-help book would have saved me from my own self-doubt, but I think that Professional Troublemaker: The Fear Fighter Manual might have at least helped me realize that self-doubt could potentially be a temporary condition.
Jones divides her book into three sections: be, say, and do. In her “Be” section she argues that “Being fully ourselves is necessary for us because it serves as a grounding force.” But self-knowledge is perhaps the most difficult of all forms of knowledge to attain, and I’d argue that courageous action in itself can often be the instructive force that leads to self-knowledge and wisdom. Sometimes we need to be brave to learn who we are.
Ajayi Jones isn’t a big philosopher, though, and I’m okay with that. I don’t like philisophy that much anyway.
Courage involves understanding what the risks are, and then going and doing it anyway, with the willingness to learn and adjust from the results and failures. Ajayi Jones’s advice isn’t bad. I’d just qualify it a bit. I DO think it is important that a person have some modicum of knowledge, balance, and skill before going out and braving something new. For example, before starting a blog, a new writer would be wise to take a writing class or two and get some serious feedback on their writing first. And most people would be wise to get some training before trying sky diving or rock climbing for the first time.
One of my favorite moments in Professional Troublemaker was when Ajayi Jones taught me how to write a Yoruba oríkì poem, which is basically a self-affirming chant that connects one to the ancestors and to one’s essential self.
I spent a good hour in the bath writing my oríkì and was pleased with the outcome: “Janice Elizabeth of house Greenwood. First of her name. Priestess of poetry. Writer and reader of books. Huntress of swells. Friend of sea turtles and mermaid of the Ala Wai Townhouse.”
Still, one of the weaknesses of the book’s early section is its assumption that self-knowledge comes easily. For example, while I can agree with Ajayi Jones that it’s useful to have articulated your own core values before you go out there trying to put on a brave face to the world or before you try to stand up for anything, understanding yourself can be a lifelong project. I spent two years working on trying to figure out my “core values;” I’d still call it a work in progress, but I’m glad I haven’t let that stop me from doing brave things. Maybe some of us know ourselves better than others. And maybe some of us take time.
Professional Troublemaker doesn’t necessarily introduce any radically new ideas into the world, but it presents them from an original perspective, and isn’t that what we ask writers to do for us? For example, Ajayi Jones taught me how to write an oríkì, so I should shut my mouth.
Ajayi Jones’s Professional Troublemaker covers ground that has been covered before. For example, Jen Sincero’s You are a Badass might be an easy comparison. But, I like Ajayi Jones’s book better, and if someone were choosing between the two, I’d choose Professional Troublemaker. For one, Ajayi Jones flavors her lessons with loving and humorous anecdotes from Yoruba culture, which makes the book refreshing. (This makes me wish more Black women wrote self-help books. I think the world would be a better place.) Secondly, Ajayi Jones doesn’t expect her readers to just manifest their success out of thin air. The book comes from a writer who understands hard work.
Her chapter, “Dream Audaciously,” encourages her readers to expect more from the world and themselves, while acknowledging that for some readers, getting to that more might be harder, especially if they are not “(like millions of white men) [who] benefit from being constantly centered, elevated, and catered to.” I think the strongest lesson that can be taken from Ajayi Jones’s book is to dream bigger and to dare greater, even in the face of adversity. She writes of the oft-posted quote (which I haven’t come across because I’m not so into the social media landscape) which goes: “Carry yourself with the confidence of a mediocre white man.” We know it to be true, but it bears repeating.
Jones’s book is also refreshing in that it doesn’t assume that everyone has the privilege or the financial stability to take all her advice at once. Jones also doesn’t write those readers off. Instead, she offers readers a road map forward and meets them where they are. I love that this book doesn’t cater to the illusion of overnight success and it doesn’t come from the voice of a person who started on third base in life and made it home–and is now trying to tell rookies how to hit home runs.
Ajayi Jones’s Professional Troublemaker gave me hope, especially because she’s willing to share that her success didn’t happen overnight. Putting anything out into the world can feel scary and hopeless, but others have done it too and survived. Not only survived, thrived.
And so, since the pandemic started, I’ve been, intermittently at first, and now more regularly, writing my essays and criticism, and keeping up with my own public-facing work. At first, nothing happened. And then small things started to happen. People wrote me little notes of encouragement. I got to write a piece I cared deeply about for Honolulu Magazine.
Overnight success didn’t come, but I like this slow climb better. I think about how I might have started this blog ten years ago and I’d be so much further along, but courage takes time, and I’m just grateful I started at all.
I’ve moved away from feeling abject terror every time I hit publish, to feeling some degree of excitement (though sometimes the feeling excitement includes the feeling of wanting to vomit in my mouth). Everything I write is still never good enough, but it is also enough, and I know it will get better.
Ajayi Jones started her own blog in 2006. Ten years later, she published her first New York Times bestselling book. Ten years. She worked her ass off. I’ve only been at it for a year. I have a long way to go. I’m not planning on stopping any time soon. New York Times bestseller’s list better have a blank space waiting for me in 2030.
About the Writer
Janice Greenwood is a writer, surfer, and poet. She holds an M.F.A. in poetry and creative writing from Columbia University.