I've been thinking a lot lately about myself and this blog. As you may or may not know, I did 30 blog posts in 30 days for the month of August. I was really proud of myself for actually being able to accomplish something that I wasn't quite sure I could do.
A surprise to myself that I made it happen. Yay!
After I finished that I decided to take September to just let myself chill out a bit and take a step back. Things just weren't where I wanted them to be and I couldn't understand why. I knew I had to do something. So I did the scary thing and did nothing. Letting yourself take a break from something that you really love and want to continuously grow is a scary thing. You feel like you're wasting time by not working on said thing. I never took a break from this blog. Ever since I started it over 3 years ago I have been constantly in go mode. I knew it was time to take a breather and assess everything. So I did it. I posted when I felt like it and had a lot of time to myself to focus more on what I want, who I'm becoming, and what direction I want to take things.
Over that period of time I learned a lot about myself that I feel like I always knew, but never fully addressed. I don't know if I was distracting myself from the things I'm drawn towards or if I was scared to admit them and face them head on. Probably a bit of both, honestly.
I'm a pretty private person. I share about myself but I don't often go into details with things. It's somewhat comical that I don't feel comfortable sharing a ton of details about my life but have a blog that literally anyone can read and look at with occasional posts like this scattered about. I like this space though and I enjoy sharing here. In fact, I want to talk about more. Specifically, getting more in depth with my yoga practice and talking more about food and our relationships with it. Two really important things that I have a lot to say about.
I've always been stopped though by a few factors that I am coming to realize don't really matter. Things that I've had to push to the back of my mind at times; such as when I think about people in my "real life" reading the things that I type out onto this screen to help someone or connect with others who resonate with my message. That makes me uncomfortable. No reason to beat around the bush. I don't like it. I guess you could say it's a lack of confidence or apprehension surrounding it all. I don't know.
That's not the point though. I could go on and on with more things that make me squirm in my seat. But that's not necessary. I think you get it.
I feel like I'm coming to a point where I'm just going to do things. I'm going to put myself out there and face the callings that have been on my radar for years. I'm ready. Looking back, things make sense. Little things of no significance from the past have so much meaning now and I try to remember that when something happens that makes me question what the heck is going on.
Here's the thing though...
I'm into writing. I'm into yoga. I'm into creativity. I'm into helping others realize that they freaking rock and deserve to take care of themselves.
Those are the things that I want to do. And I want to do them everyday.
That's just it though. I'm really into these things and I'm hesitant to share my writing for whatever reason so I just don't do it at all. Or I have a really good gift idea that I want to make but I'm worried about the outcome so I just go buy a gift. Instead of just doing the thing and putting it out in the world for whatever to happen to it, I put a stop to it. A good idea or an exciting project? NOPE. Sorry, that's not happening. Better retreat back to the safe space of living in my little comfort bubble.
I knew that I was doing this to an extent. I think most of us do until we have the realization that we're not living to our full potential and actually want to work our way towards doing so. Doing the hard things oftentimes equals receiving the beautiful rewarding things. And I don't think that it gets any easier to put yourself out there in a creative way. I think that you just get used to being uncomfortable and knowing that regardless of if the thing is deemed "good or bad" doesn't matter. The journey that lead you to that creation and moment is what holds value.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that I want to start doing the hard things. And by that I basically mean that I want to create things often that I share with the world. I don't care if they're "good or bad" anymore because really, as long as no one is harmed does it even really matter what the outcome is? I don't think so. We all receive value out of different things and what I see as good could be seen as bad by someone else. That's why I think it's so important to just create over and over again and put it out there. It's very rare that your work won't resonate with someone.
This is just a long rambling of my thoughts about being vulnerable with your creative work. When I started typing this I wasn't sure where it was going. But here we are. And it all makes sense, to me. I don't know if it'll resonate with you or even make sense to you. It's not a trim and polished as my usual posts just because I wanted it to be quite honest and real. It's a snippet of my unedited creative work, and it's the start of what will hopefully be a very creative, tough, fun, and wild ride.