I came across a piece of advice recently from someone who had finally achieved a significant life goal after working toward it for some time, and I was struck by its radical sensibility. She said yes, you’ll eventually find yourself off-track at some point–perhaps many points–along the way, and the key was to just keep starting over.
Just keep starting over.
And I really like that. It’s incredibly freeing. Just the knowledge that most people who “make it” probably didn’t get there in one fell swoop can take some of the stress away from not succeeding the first, second, or fifth time you attempt something. And it’s especially powerful for me, as I somehow decided at a very young age that if I don’t do something right or well the first time, my only real recourse is to just hide my face in shame, slink into the shadows, and hope everyone soon forgets my very existence.
It hasn’t been a particularly helpful creed.
Recently, however, I’ve done a lot of work shifting my internal narrative, the overarching story I continuously have running in my head about myself and my place in the world and relationship to other people. And a huge part of that shift has consisted of fostering vastly more self-compassion than I normally operate with. (And yes, I’m leaving that preposition hanging there because I recently found out that’s totally acceptable in most instances. I’m a little slow on the uptake sometimes, I’ll admit it.)
Self-compassion is absolutely vital for a contented existence, but it’s also extremely challenging to make space for on a consistent basis, or really at all for some of us. But imagine if a close friend or your partner or child attempted to make a go of something really important to them but came up short. Would you immediately express your intense disappointment in them, declaring they’d obviously never amount to anything, and suggest they stop embarrassing themselves already? Well, I mean, if you were a super shitty person who covered up their intense hatred of themselves by demeaning others, I guess you might. But for the vast majority of us, I think the answer is that you most certainly would not. When it’s your own setback, though? What does your self-talk sound like? Does it mirror what you’d say to a loved one in the same situation? Or does it sound like self-loathing?
Me, too, friend. Me, too.
But the instances have lessened somewhat significantly at this point, and it’s why I can be found starting this blog without feeling like I want to vomit (mostly). Because this isn’t the first blog I’ve started, or even the second…or third. Blogging has always felt like a thing I want to do, and I’ve enjoyed doing it in the past. Inevitably, though, I stop at some point because…life. But I keep coming back to it because writing is what I do. It always has been. Words are my jam. Pondering them and discovering them and weaving them together is so incredibly satisfying to me. And my brain never stops doing its thing, so, you know. The words need to go somewhere.
So I’ve decided to put some of them here. Words about words. Words about writing. Words strung together into stories. Words about life and journeys and goals.
Somewhere down the road, I have additional plans for this blog, but for now, I’ll start here.
I’ll start over.
Again.
Ware the Words 