So, there you are. Sitting outside a closed door. Just waiting for someone to let you in.

Original photo by Catarina Carvalho

Only you don’t know if anyone is in there. You don’t know if anyone will let you in. You don’t know anyone who has been in there before. You just aren’t sure about a million little things.

Knock on the damn door.

Opportunity knocks. Do you? Click To Tweet

Like, this is super easy, right? You learned about door knocking before you could probably even string a sentence together. I’m sure as a toddler, you annoyed the hell out of everyone you knew by knocking on doors, regardless of whether or not they should’ve been opened. But you knew, just from a simple lesson, that to get the door to open, you knock.

Want to come in? Knock on the damn door.

Honestly, don’t even pretend you didn’t know knocking was an option.

Like, and be real here, how many knock knock jokes do you have locked and loaded for the opportune corny joke moment?

You know why those jokes work?

BECAUSE PEOPLE KNOW TO KNOCK ON THE DAMN DOOR.

I feel I should state for the record that this post is both literally and figuratively about knocking on the damn door.

Literally, because as I write this, I’m waiting on a student to show up to an appointment outside of office hours. She’s 13 minutes late. I have a feeling she’s sitting outside my office, not making a sound. And I refuse to open the door until she knocks, BECAUSE THAT’S HOW DOORS FUCKING WORK.

And figuratively, because I’m so tired of people complaining about not being let in. Whatever it is they’re trying to make happen. They wait with their thumbs up their asses and complain about how they aren’t being given opportunities. They want someone else to make something happen. They complain that they need permission. They’re constantly looking for coattails to ride on. They just whine and it’s a fucking waste of everyone’s time.

(Full disclosure: I spent the majority of my twenties being this type of whiner. I didn’t knock, and I didn’t get in. Now, you can catch me BEATING DOWN EVERY DAMN DOOR IN MY PATH.)

You knock on the damn door. And if that door doesn’t open, you knock again.

And sometimes, after two knocks, it won’t open.

Then you get creative.

You get a fucking crowbar and you wedge that sucker open. You squeeze through. And you keep doing that with every locked door in your way until you get to where you want to be.

(You know you’re supposed to be here, right? I mean, on the side of the door you want to be on.)

Though, most times you won’t have to get a crowbar. Most times when you knock, someone will open the door.

Some doors won’t open. I’ll be real. Some doors, for whatever reason, are just stuck. But here’s the thing — most places you want to be have multiple points of ingress. SO KNOCK ON A DIFFERENT DOOR.

(Double check that you are actually knocking on a door and not just banging your head against a wall.)

That’s really the biggest bit of advice I can give. If you keep knocking, someone will open a door.

Knock on the Damn Door Click To Tweet

Don’t ask in a bullshit self-deprecating way that gives the person on the other side of the door too many options to deny you entry.

Directly state what you want.

Knock on the damn door.

 

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