This is the beginning…
The story of how I started an article and actually finished it!
I’ve always thought that starting something was the hardest part…it turns out that I was so wrong.
I’ve been wanting to start writing for more than a year now. When I say “writing” I mean on a regular basis, with consistency and interesting stories, you know, I wanted to start a blog or write a book. But I never did!
I’m the queen of procrastination when it comes to “do something for real”, with exposure and judging internet people as main targets. I’m sure I’m able to find at least 10 reasons not to start, every time I got a new project in mind. Basically, there’s a lot of recursive reasons:
1) This will not be good enough!
2) This will not be interesting enough!
3) Nobody will care about it!
4) What if this is a big failure?
5) What if the whole Internet talk about how bad and boring my work is?
6) OMG I’m a fraud!…what am I doing?
(…)
I stop here…because I think you know what I mean. Maybe you’ve experienced this feeling too!
Seriously, it was way easier when we were young. I remember that time at my grandma’s house where I was sitting close to the fire pitt, all alone because the grownups were talking about grownup stuff at the dinning table. I think I was around 10 back then and I started my own ‘graphic novel’. Just like that! At the end of that Sunday afternoon I had a 10 pages ‘book’ full of texts and drawings about Boulie the clown fish & Lucie the whale. I don’t exactly remember what this was about, but I know I was proud of myself and I showed it to my entire family without fearing their criticism or mocking comments.
So why everything has changed now?
Starting is just the beginning.
A really good friend of mine was shocked when I told him that I had at least 20 articles’ drafts waiting in my computer. He advices me to take the leap and to get over my shyness and fears. I said I’ll try…it seemed easy after all.
But starting is not enough! In fact the real challenge is to get things done, from A to Z. We have to finish something to make it whole! When hard times come, when the inspiration leaves us, when we’re stuck, we find every reasons to quit. We go back to square one with all our questions about our work and even ourselves.
The thing is, maybe we just set the bar too high and we assume that failure is going to be at the end of the road, without even trying. We want every attempt to be perfect at the first shot, but breaking news: this will not be perfect, there’s no such thing as perfection and deep down we know that.
So, start and keep going!
What if we stopped comparing ourself
to others?
Let’s say we’re all alone, lost in the woods. We want to build our own cabin. We have the skills. We have materials. But we don’t have any internet connection. All set? Good! So we start the construction and we manage to finish it. If we’re not satisfied, we learn from your mistakes and try again. At the end we are proud of ourselves! End of the story.
Now let’s rewind and add some people to the equation…our woods neighbors. The story goes like that: everyone stare at each other work and we spend all our time comparing every stage of the construction instead of building our own walls.
I’m pretty sure our thoughts go like that:
How many windows? Is the door big enough? OMG I forgot to add a chimney…Santa Claus is gonna be mad at me!
And if we fail? That’s the worse thing that could ever happen! Everyone is gonna laugh and we’ll probably end up eaten by a bear because we’ll never finish your cabin.
And if we succeed, well I guess we’ll find the other people’s houses way better than ours and we’ll beat ourselves up for that.
My point is: if we want to achieve something, we should all stop comparing ourselves to the others for the wrong reasons.
YES, there’s people way more talented than us and NO what we do will not pleased everybody, but that’s ok! Let’s do things for ourselves just for once.
Don’t get me wrong, I think that other people’s work matter! The key is to get inspired by other people’s work but not to feel unworthy because of it!
Let’s dream, let’s succeed!
Just ask yourself that:
“What would you do if you weren’t afraid?”
We know the answer deep down inside of us. But we’re too shy to picture ourself at the top of the world. Maybe we think that success is only meant to be for the Others…you know… the talented ones.
What if we’re wrong? What if we inspire someone? What if our dreams come true?
I know that if I manage to help at least one single person with this article I’d be more than happy!
I’m writing this article to convince myself that I’m capable of starting something that I care about and to finish it without this irrational fear.
I know it’s not perfect, but does it have to be?
I love writing, I love designing…I love a lot of things but I’m too scared to even try. However, I think I’m done with that.
I have a lot to share and I want to start now!
Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.
_Seneca
