[This blog is actually an amalgam of, like, six different blogs that were all dead ends until I pulled everything together into this one. So, as the Morrissey sang, stop me if you've heard this one before.]
In a conversation with some friends, you get a beautiful idea. It's like a flash of light in your brain. You're so excited that you start taking notes on napkins and scribble little chunks of thoughts everywhere. You can see the whole project, and you know you're the perfect person to do it.
The next day, you still feel pretty good about it. You get started. You know that you can do it. After a few days, you start moving into the middle. It's not as easy as you thought, and you don't know how to ask for help. Your confidence is waning. Your inner editor starts picking at you, telling you that it's not good enough and you don't know what you're doing and you never were the right person for this anyway. You may even get a whallop of, "You're not the right person for anything; who do you think you are?"
This is the tough part. You've got a choice now. This is the crossroads.
To your right, you see abandoned projects scattered on both sides of the road. The path is level, and after a while, you can coast. It doesn't take anything to walk this way, and it's familiar ground.
To your left, the road looks impassible. Steep, rocky, ankle-crunching gravel. Weeds, trees, brush blocking the way. You can't see anything but obstacles, and there's no way you'll make it past those bushes.
Easy decision, right? The clear road looks way cooler. You don't have to work for anything, you just coast along and do what you think is best ---- throw it all over your shoulder and do what you've always done: give up. You don't even have to make an effort.
But here's the thing: You're only seeing the first hundred feet of these paths. It's just like driving at night: you only get to see as far as your headlights can reach, but you can travel forever that way. You just have to keep going.
When I first started this blog, I knew I could do it. But I didn't know how. I enlisted some friends to support me and help out. I posted my first post and hoped I could keep rolling under my own momentum.
Then I ran away like the blog was on fire. It could have been, and I would not have noticed. I was terrified of telling the truth and being who I am in a public forum. Every time I thought about the blog, my heart started pounding. I felt like a fraud. I knew that if I told the truth about my life, the world would explode.
You may have a different blockade. You may feel worthless. You may think that you have nothing to contribute to the world. You may not know what you want to do with your life, or you may have too many things that you want to do. But everyone, every single person, has a core challenge that they can undertake during their time here. You can avoid it your whole life if you want; that's your choice. But if you face it, you can fix it. It just takes time, and effort.
I could look back on those long dead blogs and think, wow, what a waste of time and effort and energy. But I know now what they were: a good testing ground so I could get my bearings, and become accustomed to the idea of having my words out in the world. I wrote a lot of interesting things on those blogs, and focused on different subjects I enjoy. I've combined those all together for this particular blog, and it's been a really interesting process. Those practice runs were really helpful. Did I know what was happening at the time? Hell no! Did I think leaving them alone for years at a time was going to be helpful? No, I thought I was a loser who didn't know what the hell she was doing. So, maybe next time I'll decide to avoid berating myself about things that I don't understand yet, and instead accept that we don't always know where projects are leading.
This post is a case in point. It starts out about one thing and ends about another. Ye Gods. But I'll leave it be. When I picture the path of abandoned projects I mentioned above, I always see a weird hill with random dead air conditioners and dishwashers sitting under trees with piles of junk everywhere. I guess you can get a lot of good parts and build some cool stuff from dead machines. Maybe that's what I'm doing, building some robots. And watching bad movies. Yeah.
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