Letting it out

I have composed many blog posts in my head since my first one.  I'm sure any number of them would have been better than this one will turn out.  However, I am practicing a skill of DOING IT ANYWAY.  Potential is abundant; when I fail to act because reality doesn't match the potential I imagine, I am not coming from a place of abundance.  Even though my dreams and hopes and plans are exciting, inspiring, and even POSSIBLE, my "scarcity mentality" keeps me from getting much closer, holds me back from Abundance.  Hold me back from my own power and the richness of life.

A few years ago, after coloring Easter eggs with my kids at my mother's house, I got all worked up when it was time to throw out the pretty water.  This happens every year; I don't want the fun to stop, I feel like I want to go on coloring forever.  That year the water was in clear glass tumblers, and I stacked them up in a rainbow and looked at the light streaming through them from an outside window, and I took some photographs.  I whined a little about having to stop (remember, I'm the adult here-- my kids were off doing something else by now) and was agitated, and my mom, an artist, said, "Emily!  You need a creative outlet!"  I laughed and said, I do, I really do.

Every year I get kind of the same way about Easter eggs.  One year, I splashed the color into the snow.  Another year, I dyed the sidewalk.  This year, I rinsed my hair with the egg dye.  No one remarked that the color was different (I couldn't tell) or that I smelled like vinegar, but my hair rinsed magenta for the next three days.  So, it's a little quirky. 

I keep stopping and starting.  I have hundreds of ideas of "outlets" and I keep telling myself no.  I have ideas for going into business, by myself, or with my mother or a friend, and I keep dragging my feet when others do not embrace my crazy ideas.  This blog is my new outlet.  It is the beginning of a network of outlets.  I have spend years reading, absorbing, processing in therapy, twiddling my thumbs, and now I need to let it out!  Express myself!  I have many ways of expressing myself, but this is one that I need now.  Even if I go weeks between posts, even if I ramble, even if I write masterful prose that never moves from the space between my ears to cyberspace, I am letting it out.  I'll call it starting and starting.

First Step

I have stayed up way too late messing with this, and I'm finally doing the best thing and writing a quick post to get started, and then putting myself to bed. It is an apt introduction to me, I suppose, for me to share that I spent nearly 2 hours fiddling with the design and haven't had anything to say yet. My perfectionism can be powerfully crippling. I live in a world of potential, and my inner editor did not want me to start my blog until I knew how everything would turn out. Until it was perfect.

So, I do have to laugh at myself, for being myself, I guess. I intend for this blog to be about redefining perfection, or at least the way I stumble along through reality, now that I am letting go of fears. The time it took to get to the first word of my first post (on the day I said, that's it! I've been waiting for years to write this blog! I'm starting tonight!) was a prime example of exactly why I'm challenging myself to do this. I am chipping away at my shell, poking my beak out, and embracing reality. I am filled with love and enthusiasm, and I can't wait any longer to share it with you, and with this vaguely vulnerable, public version of myself. And at this moment, I am loving myself enough gently tell myself to turn off the computer and to tuck myself into bed.