Rewind: Dawn White

When being busy stops feeling like success

If life happens in seasons, then I’d like to think my life is somewhere around Season Three, Episode 4. I like to view my life as episodic television versus one linear journey from spring to winter because I think that both personal and professional patterns unfold like character development. They take place over a very long arc with growth and fallow periods happening in cyclical stages, succeeding and failing, filled with bouts of self-doubt and confidence coming and going. Think Tony Soprano, the ultimate boss who struggled every day to know if he was losing or winning.

What puts my story at Season Three, Episode Four? I think it’s because I now find myself in a place where I have lived through the early days of establishing a career, the “take no prisoners / nothing to lose” years of feckless determination and blind self-confidence, the highs of big successes, the moral tests of how far I am willing to go, creative drain, bursts of renewed energy, bigger career successes at the cost of my personal boundaries and now, today I am reflecting on the thing we all think about: Do I want to keep doing this and if so, how will it work for me?

When I first moved to Los Angeles in 2006 to further my ambition of working in the music industry, I slept on the floor of a shabby apartment in Silverlake for about a week until I was able to purchase and assemble an Ikea bed. Friends offered me places to stay but I chose the floor because I wanted to prove to myself that if this was the worst it ever got, I would be ok. I paid rent for four months up front and I had $15,000 in the bank to live off of. The day that I moved to LA, I got a call to come and work for a management company for a very soon-to-be A list music producer. My salary was set at $34,000. Within two months, that salary increased tenfold when a song we managed exploded. I earned my first (and only) platinum album with my name on it.

I thought, “This is it. I’m on my way to the big time.” I was scouted and recruited to work for one of the industry’s biggest moguls at that time. His career spanned music as an artist and label owner, television and film producer, fashion and lifestyle brands. I was offered the position of Chief of Staff and would be his right hand, traveling with him all over the world on private jets, yachts and living in mansions. I came this close to accepting that job but then I ultimately turned it down. Then in my early thirties, I couldn’t bring myself to fully sacrifice my own life for the sake of my career. In hindsight, this decision probably saved me both personally and professionally as this person turned out to be more of a monster than a mogul. And it taught me my first very important lesson about trusting my instincts, creating boundaries and my own relationship with ambition.

I pivoted after this and started my own boutique management and consulting company. I was fortunate to have one client on my roster that still consistently paid the bills and I brought in enough additional income that I was able to survive. I traded in the expensive rental house in the Hollywood Hills and moved into a modest apartment in Echo Park. I lived hood rich. Small apartment, luxury car.

I felt like I was failing. I grappled to find the creative energy to want to keep going. I thought of leaving the music industry and becoming a comedy writer, as everyone does who is struggling with depression, right? And then I learned my next important lesson: It is okay to go slow and take a step back. It is not okay to compare myself to others as a form of inspiration. As they say, comparison is the thief of joy.

An interesting thing happened during this slower period. For the first time since I threw myself head first into my career in my late 20s, I managed to find a personal life. My dating life before this was mostly non-commital since my priorities and obligations were to be busy and on the road as much as possible. I got married and had a baby as the proverbial biological clock was ringing like a 4-alarm fire. And then I learned my next important lesson: Women can also have it all.

By this, I mean that you can be a parent, you can be a manager, you can have friends and family and success BUT you have to have realistic expectations about what “ALL” means. For me, this means knowing when to say no, it means that sometimes less is more. More time for my son and my loved ones means less time to take on a huge roster of clients and instead focus on one or two artists that I am super passionate about. More concentrated time means greater creativity and more fulfilling personal achievement.

Remember the Blackberry? I used to think that people who were constantly typing away on that thing or answering three different cell phones were succeeding because they looked busy. I thought I had to be Ari Gold from Entourage. In 2022 on the heels of the pandemic, I stepped into one of the busiest working periods of my life while simultaneously trying to be a now divorced single mom. Did I mention I was also on my son’s school board and volunteering at two different mentoring groups? At the height of all this, I was having rampant panic attacks, gaining weight and constantly feeling like I wasn’t doing enough in any area of my life. I inexplicably lost a client that I had no knowledge of their malcontent and ultimately, I had a nervous breakdown. And then I learned my most important lesson of all: Being busy is not a measure of success.

I think real success is being able to get to a place where I can breathe, I can take the beach day with my son, I can sleep one day a week without an alarm set, I can reflect on both my achievements and my failures and learn from them equally. I can be proud of the quality of the work that I do, not the quantity, and most importantly, who I am doing the work for. I can have both a personal and a professional life that are equally rich and rewarding. I much prefer to use these markers as motivation and creative inspiration. Three seasons and four episodes, or lessons, later and I feel more grounded and ready for what comes next than I ever have before. I feel successful.

I am proud of myself for recognizing that I want for nothing. There is food in the fridge, good wine in my glass and a home that is more than I could have dreamt of when I arrived in LA with a suitcase and a dream. I sleep in a comfy bed and not on the floor. But if I had to, I know that I would be ok, too.

THINGS THAT HELP ME:

Hot yoga and Lagree, laughing with my son, gratitude journaling, shamelessly ordering in, cooking for my own personal delight, a perfectly balanced negroni, hosting dinner parties for my dearest friends, 1000-piece puzzles, setting realistic boundaries with clients around personal time for both them and me.