Greetings from northern Virginia, where Julie and I have been hunkered down for the holidays. My father has graciously allowed us the use of his apartment while he is in California, and we’ve made ourselves quite at home! We’ve been eating very well, watching plenty of movies, reading, playing games, and going on walks. We even had a little dance party for New Year’s Eve.
In this domestic bliss, I’ve actually found it harder to write than I expected. I figured I’d have plenty of unstructured down time to crank out some amazing content. Well, the curse perfectionism struck again and foiled my plans. Each time I would “sit down to write,” I’d feel overwhelmed by the vastness of my thoughts and ideas that I wanted to communicate, and I’d hardly get far at all.
I suppose, in giving myself a “perfect” writing environment of peace and quiet and plenty of time, I invited perfectionism back in; and I forgot one of my intentions for my blog: “This blog should be an exercise in trying to shed my perfectionism.”
Julie and I have been working on “The Year Ahead” to reflect on 2020 and consider intentions for 2021. (I highly recommend spending a few hours doing this; this is the second year I’ve done it.) At the end of the section reflecting on the past year, the workbook asks you to come up with the title of the book about your 2020. Mine is titled: “One Foot in Front of the Other on the Path to Meaning.” (Perhaps that will be the title of my memoir one day.)
Lots to unpack there, but for the purposes of my perfectionism discussion, my mantra needs to be: one foot in front of the other. Creating anything is always the first step to creating something.
Creating anything is always the first step to creating something.
So here I am, writing anything and hoping it becomes something. Indeed, that’s probably a good motto for my wander overall. I still don’t really know the “something” that I’m creating with my life, but I’m trying to create anything with each successive step I take.