It took me a
ridiculously long time to sit my butt down and start this blog. After writing
and posting just a few posts, it took months for me to start it back up. For
the past few years, I had spurts of excitement and would come up with all sorts
of ideas. In the past few months, those "spurts" became a nearly
daily thing. Wouldn't it have made more sense if I had, well, just sat my butt down and started this blog?
As the recovering
perfectionist that I confessed to being in prior posts, I have learned to ease
up the reigns on myself. The problem is that at times I let myself get too
comfortable with contentment. Oh, but then I "relapse", if you will,
and suddenly get mad at myself for not being productive, so I get my big ideas
going. At this time is around when the perfectionism lashes forward. "Oh,
Hannah, you will have to work very, very hard for this to turn out well"
or "That post sucks! Delete it and rewrite it now". Sometimes it is
as simple as "is that really the best
thing you could be writing about?" That is all I need to scare myself out
of sitting down and writing.
When I was in high
school, I always thought it would be cool to try theater. We had a great
program at our school. I also happened to love goofing off and doing skit
acting, as well as practicing my own little monologues expressing my pursuit of
valor in my arguing of politics when I was home alone. I can be pretty
dramatic, that's for sure! Notice the bus stops at the word
"thought". I never did theater. In fact, I never even auditioned.
Why? I was so afraid of not getting the part I wanted or even a part at all
that I never bothered to audition.
Now, I don't lose
sleep over it, but that was a little regret of mine. I ended up doing a small
play in college for one of my friends who was in a directing class and I had a
blast! It was about 10 minutes long and I was a bratty teenager and I loved it!
Another friend of mine is really into film-making and I was, again, a teenager
(a skanky one) with about 10 lines, and the protagonist in another film (not
skanky). I loved it! Now I drive him crazy about wanting more parts in his
movies. And to think, I could have gotten my start into not-so-professional
acting at a younger age, if I had not been so afraid of even trying.
What did that have
to do with the first paragraph? Some stuff, that's what! I jump around a lot,
ultimately to drive my point home. I tell that story as an example of something
I'm sure you can relate to in some way. Some people can faceplant on the floor
of their very dreams and hop right up and carry on, but the less fortunate of
us lay still for a minute.. Or a year, and hope everyone thinks we just kind of
died so they don't have to make weird eye contact or suppress laughter any
long. If you are a "lay there" person like me, I want to urge you to
keep on going, keep on trying. I have to choose daily to either stay put where
I'm comfortable or to dare to try things I might fail at. This post is an
example of the latter choice, I am happy to say. Big things await you when you
do! You've all heard about Abe Lincoln, J.K. Rowling (my hero), Michael Jordan,
Oprah, Thomas Edison AND Nikola Tesla (ooh I put both men in that same
sentence!). You even have the Trix rabbit as a prime example. If he had stopped
at hearing "Trix are for kids" the first time around, we would have
only had one commercial that made us a little sad. All of these people (except
that poor, fictional rabbit) are now tremendous examples of success. Yeah,
that's a cliched message to tell, but we forget it enough to where it's okay to
repeat from time to time.
Go apply for that
job you might be underqualified for. Train for that half marathon regardless of
having been the kid that "got sick" every day in P.E. Move to New
York and become the next Coco Chanel (but please get a source of income for
that rent!). Open the prairie dog farm of your dreams! Better yet, do whatever
the crap you want to do! Let yourself fall on your butt! Pick yourself up and
saddle back up! If some idiot keeps reminding you that you failed despite your
other victories, kick him or her to the curb! I don't care if it's your
firstborn, if that kid's at least 18, do it! The company we keep will either
help us pick ourselves up or will gladly hold our face down in the mud and
laugh as we gurgle.
I know it isn't
always that easy. Like I said, three years and a few months of obsession to get
me blogging. That is why I wrote this. I am volunteering myself as your
cheerleading squad. Go do neat things! Don't let yourself get so consumed by
fear of failure that it becomes fear of trying.
