Running with lobsters
If you don’t run with them, you’ll be running from them.
At least that’s what my dream told me the other night. I was caught up with mobsters, or maybe lobsters — the claws, the sideways movements, the rules that weren’t what they seemed. It wasn’t about crime or shellfish. It was about a feeling: that you’re in a world where the official story doesn’t match the actual script. You know you’re moving, but you’re not sure whether it’s by choice or compulsion.
That dream hit too close to home. I don’t need to spell it out, but I’ve felt the tension of working inside systems that don’t always line up with their stated values. You can sense the misdirection. You can sense the unspoken rules. You can sense that speaking the wrong truth too early will get you in trouble.
And yet my mental weather has been surprisingly clear. No doom spirals, no anxious rehearsals of disaster. I’ve been moving forward. Filing for social security, setting up retirement disbursements, big tasks that looked like mountains but turned out to be hills. I did them over lunch. What I thought would be monsters were only shadows.
But here’s where the pivot comes. The pull of two gravities is real. One side says: Play the game. Write the book the crowd wants. Compete on the crowded battlefield, prove you belong, say the words people expect to hear.
The other side says: Tell the truth. Not the truth that flatters. Not the truth that sells. The truth as you see it. The truth as it lands in your bones.
When Nehemiah was rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem, his enemies tried to lure him down from the work. His response was simple: “I am doing important work and I cannot come down.” Centuries later, Ken Atchity took that same line for his book A Writer’s Time. The point hasn’t changed. If you are doing important work, you don’t leave the wall to argue with critics or chase applause. You stay on the wall.
That’s the profound pivot. Stop worrying about who will listen. Stop worrying about whether your truth is popular. Stop worrying about the alternative paths you could take. Fear is the real gatekeeper. Fear of being ignored. Fear of not being accepted. Fear of not being “enough.” But when you know the work is important, you stay at the wall. You keep building.
My call isn’t to preach or convert. My rare value is showing what happens when a person connects to their own source of power and learns how to drive it higher. Not just possibility, but process. Not just inspiration, but clarity on what it takes.
And here’s the good news: the rewards do begin to show. Not instantly. Not dramatically. But slowly, steadily, in ways that reinforce the path. So I’ll meter my energy. I’ll keep moving. I’ll stop running with lobsters—and stop running from them, too. I’ll just stay on the wall and keep building.
For you
If you feel caught in a system that doesn’t line up with what it says, or if you’re torn between pleasing the crowd and telling the truth, here are some clear things you can do:
1. Name the two gravities. Write down the pull to please and the pull to truth. See them both clearly, and you’ll feel less trapped.
2. Stay on the wall. When distractions, critics, or temptations to “play the game” come, remember Nehemiah: “I am doing important work and I cannot come down.”
3. Redefine success. Don’t measure it by applause or agreement. Measure it by whether the work is true and whether it builds something that lasts.
4. Act on the scary tasks. Apply for the thing, file the paperwork, make the call. Often the monsters are smaller than you imagine.
5. Meter your energy. Don’t sprint to exhaustion. Use your power in a steady, focused way that carries you through the long game.
6. Trust the slow burn. Rewards come, but they rarely come all at once. Let the steady reinforcement prove the path.
Your important work is waiting. Don’t come down. Don’t run with lobsters, and don’t run from them either. Stay where you are meant to be, and build. Focus your goals at a higher level, and keep your focus there.