Better things and happiness

This week we opened Better, our space for creative makers. It was exhilarating.

At lunch with my son, Andrew, at My Bread and Butter in Parkview, we were comparing notes on writing and bemoaning the loneliness of solitary work. “If only there was a place where people doing solitary creative work could get together – like having a pub to go to – where you could meet others who would understand the challenges of what you do and why you do it.”

That was in July 2016. This week we opened Better.

It was a quiet opening. We decided that throwing a party would just bring people who enjoyed a party, and that was not necessarily who we wanted. Rather we wanted excellent humans, including those who are thoughtful, optimistic, kind and creative. We particularly wanted to ferret out those more solitary types who enjoy working alone, who understand the creative process, who are trying to make freelance or portfolio lives work for themselves, and who might “get” why we made this place.

It seems to have worked. We met some awesome people during the week; inspired people with their own visions for creative work; warm, friendly people who listened and shared their stories and information; imaginative people with ideas for how to live better, and how they want Better to work for them; hopeful and positive people.

It was wonderful to hear people say how lovely the space is, and to be thanked for making it. But the ultimate compliment was being told that we had managed to make Better unthreatening. This is what we really wanted; a warm, cosy space that people can feel at home in; better than the coffee shops that most freelancers resort to.

I create for the joy of creating, but creating Better has taken that joy to another level, seeing how others respond to what we have made. It really has been an exhilarating week.

This is the first time I’ve run my own business. (I’ve been involved in running many businesses that were not my own.) There have been anxious moments as I’ve watched the money flow out with the knowledge that it is going to take some months to reverse the direction of flow.

Vishen Lakhiani in The Code of the Extraordinary Mind makes an arguement for setting goals, but using them to increase your current state of happiness without being attached to the outcome; to focus on the experiences that you get along the way to your goal. I thought it a somewhat odd idea – why set a goal and not be attached to it? But this week has made it clearer to me. Although I really want this venture to succeed and will work hard at it, if it doesn’t, it will still have been worth all the money and the effort for the experiences of the past week.