Begin, baby.
You must begin.
This is a reminder that I’ve set in my phone to pop up after my daily alarms. It is not a cue to get up and start my day, or a signal to complete things on my to-do-list. It is a prompt. A nudge. A nag. It is intended to inspire the best in me, but many days it just feels ominous. The truth and longing that I went to bed with the night before reemerge with that alert on my phone. The feelings I struggled to pack away so that I could rest peacefully, immediately rejoin me with those three words.
This post alone has been two weeks in the making. Beginning is the hardest part for me for both simple and complex reasons. For a long time, I could not figure out why starting presented such a significant impediment for me. It has taken some time — and some therapy and difficult conversations — to realize and unpack the “why.”
I’m afraid to create because if I can’t produce art that I am proud of, I will break my heart.
That is the stunning truth and the one that I will allow myself the greatest grace in overcoming. There are a lot of other smaller truths that lead up to that and I’ve fought to discover each one. Many of the answers are not pretty and are the product of bad habits, lack of discipline, and things that I have had clean up...cause I learned from Mother Angelou that once we know better, we owe it to ourselves to do better.
For a long time, it felt like I was just sitting in the middle of a mess. It was like trying to clean up a messy room and pack to move somewhere else at the same time. It was chaos. And I cannot create in mess or chaos. But I had to move somewhere else; I’d been stuck for too long. I learned that was a large part of the reason why I could not write. Also, writing is just hard as hell and exposing my writing is scary as hell. So I basically had a perfect shitstorm of delay, doubt, and deterrents.
No longer.
I do not know if beginning will ever be easy for me. But what I do know is that writing is absolutely necessary for me to ease the longing, quiet my fears, and be the creative and storyteller that I instinctively daydreamed about when I was a little girl. Everyday I must write or brainstorm or collaborate or read books that inspire and challenge me. Every single day I must find some way to align myself with my purpose. I know that when I do the work I feel lighter. Even when I am frustrated or struggle to express an idea with equal parts passion and clarity, I am still light. I think I have earned this peace in my creative process because I’ve accepted these two things:
absolute fulfillment of my purpose is ceaseless; creativity is a life’s work, not a benchmark goal
I must be open to the creative process and okay with not knowing or having complete control over what manifests
I am my best option.
Our dreams and our heart’s desires are divine. Time never separates us from them. I found ways to cope with the abandonment of the pursuit of my dreams. I succeeded at other things and uncovered new strengths and talents. And as I took on new opportunities, I got better and better at ignoring the longing that was my untended desires. But the thing about divine purpose is that it is it runs the show and eventually nothing I did could quiet the longing. I don’t like being vulnerable and not having the illusion of control. However, I dislike cheating myself a hell of a lot more.
Writers write.
Baby, I’m back.
"Now, keep in mind that I'm an artist and I'm sensitive about my shit" - Erykah Badu