The essence of a beginning

This blog sat in cyberspace gathering dust for a long time, and I have been wondering why. I could make excuses. The truth is simpler.

I had convinced myself that I am a moderately good writer, and that cornered me. If I am good, then everything I publish has to be good. The pressure of that expectation quietly kills any motivation to begin. And the people who really are good at it? I have always wondered how they start. Notice what I did there: I put myself on one side, and the good writers on the other.

Somewhere between the last post and this one

It hit me that we are wired to believe any real effort, any step outside our comfort zone, has to pay off in a great result. That is what the story says. Work hard and you succeed. Have talent and you succeed. So we contemplate far more than we act.

And when the chance to act arrives, we wait until we are sure of success. Or we put it off for so long that we are finally forced to let go of something we still call a work in progress.

Not every first attempt was a great attempt

We forget that. We have been fooled into thinking the best had instant success. They did not. Success is built on experience, and on learning from mistakes. It is a process, not a result.

The trouble is that we are all excellent at showing the best we have delivered, and sweeping the journey under the rug. We fool ourselves into believing success was a moment and not an achievement, and then we fool everyone around us into believing the same.

No wonder people are afraid to begin. They expect results without starting the process.

So this is a beginning

It is allowed to be imperfect. We are not one-hit wonders. We are an evolution on the way to a revolution.

If you have been sitting on something, whether a post, a pitch, a product or a first sentence, begin it this week. The first step is always the smallest one.