For love

Since I started this blog in March, so many people have said to me that they would love to do something similar or do something creative but that they just don’t have the guts or they worry that what they create would not be good enough.

I have these doubts all the time too and actually, they sometimes prevent me from showing up (in fact, I am terrified about publishing this very blog – it’s rather out there and perhaps a little bit smug), but here is what helps me get started:

I have always had a niggling feeling that I wanted to ‘do something’. I still have that sense and I am still not 100% sure of what that ‘something’ is. However, by surrendering to the urge to write, that goal is starting to form.

Spending time doing something which I really love is expanding my horizons and my dreams in a way I had not anticipated. But the biggest and the best change that I could not have predicted was just how much joy, spending time at my laptop, with words, has brought me. It is more than the hour or so spent….it is time spent before, stretching out my thoughts, exercising ideas, racing around my brain; it is time spent afterwards, the sense of achievement, the feeling that I have grown, that I have learnt something new. It is stimulating in a way I can barely explain. I feel grateful. I feel peaceful. I feel full.

It is freeing as I consider the future: yes I still need to be a grown up and there are bills to pay, but that somehow feels easier to bear, so long as I am filling my cup with words and creativity. I think too I am finding some release from the need for approval – I am writing for pleasure and not to please and in so doing am finding out new things about myself. I also feel liberated about what success looks like – I used to feel such guilt: I had a brain, qualifications etc that should be resulting in a certain status, a certain level of wealth, if only I applied myself. Now my notion of success feels different. It is measured by my response to what I feel called to do. When I write, I feel like I am living this life as I am meant to – full of excitement and breathless. I am living consciously and not just going through the motions. I have this growing sense of comfort that when my time is done here, I won’t feel I have wasted it, because I will have lived passionately, regardless of whether or not I run a successful business or have a large house in the country. Finally, I am growing into a good role model for the girls, beyond simply being mum.

And all of this, simply because I began. I showed up. I responded to my longing to be a writer. The thing I never started because I was afraid I would fail at and if I was terrible at the thing my heart most desired, what next?

See, there, I have said it. I am a writer. Not because I have published a book, not because I am read my millions (or even hundreds), but because it is what I feel compelled to do and it is because what fills me with light, love and joy.

So, if you want to write a blog, if you want to sing opera , if you want to teach, if you want to paint, if you want to write poetry, if you want to campaign – just begin. Just do a little bit of what you love and see what comes.

There need be no end game, no plan. Just do it ‘because’. Just do it for love. Baby steps. You won’t regret it and only good things can follow. Not because you are going to be an international megastar overnight, just because you will be helping your soul to sing.

I would also strongly urge you to read ‘The Big Magic’ by Elizabeth Gilbert and ‘Light is the New Black’ by Rebecca Campbell. Both books have felt like keys to unlocking my fear and letting it go.

Now my excitement is palpable and I feel like I have just begun. I’d love for you to feel the same way too.

Kerry

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Ps thanks to Pinterest for the image

Pps thanks to @Thebigmagic @Elizabeth Gilbert @Lightisthenewblack @rebeccacampbell