On April 22 I announced on the blog my intent to turn all my ‘Writing From The Wound’ posts into a book and I scared the bejeesus out of myself. I have been playing cat and mouse with that intent ever since. Every every single night I’ve promised myself that tomorrow would be the day, the day I’d push aside fear and insecurity and begin. Every single night.
I let fear and insecurity drive my bus more often than I’d care to admit. I toss them the keys and bury my head under a blanket of busy – so much busy. I’m SO busy there is no possible way to start a project of this magnitude. After I made that announcement fear and insecurity shifted my bus into overdrive and put the pedal to the metal. They have been steering the machine for four months and all of my busy has become a security blanket.
I’m not proud of this. I beat myself up about it on the regular – I turn the spoils of the beatings into self loathing and feed it to insecurity and it, in turn, adds fuel to fear. It’s a deadly game, it kills creativity and leaves confidence in the dust.
My intended book is virtually written. Its bones appeared one post at a time on the blog over the course of a year and a half. I was confident enough when I wrote those posts to share them. I owned my feelings. I told my truth. I don’t know why I’ve been so hesitant to take the next step.
I fell asleep pondering this dilemma the other night and tossed and turned on my hesitation. It’s probably fear of failure. But in order to fail a person actually has to try first. I decided I will never know if this project will fly if I don’t give it wings.
So yesterday morning I cast aside my busy and pulled out the hard copies of my ‘Writing From The Wound’ blogs and started. Started to read. Started to sort. Started to work. And something remarkable happened – I got enthused about the project and worked on it again today.
I have no idea if this book idea is a good one or not, but I will never know if I don’t write it. I have to try before I find out if it fails or flies. I’ve decided to drive the damn bus. Fear and insecurity will undoubtedly be along for the ride but I’m sending them to the seat at the back. I’m steering this baby, I’m taking the wheel.