My first blog...finally!

In 4th grade I declared I wanted to be a writer when I grew up. My friend Laura and I would sit on the metal grates on the playground at recess with our spiral notebooks and craft our book series (a knock-off of Little Women). On Book Day where we were to dress up as a character from our favorite book, Laura and I dressed up like our own characters and told the whole school that we were writing our own book series. It was going to happen. Besides, Louisa May Alcott was dead, who was going to come after us for plagiarism?

Those half-written manuscripts are somewhere in a Rubbermaid tote in my mom’s basement. I have yet to send my short story from college creative writing into a magazine to get published, as my professor suggested. And I have 72 pages of my semi-memoir written, but still have not gotten even that much into a cohesive string of thought. Why haven’t I done it? And why am I just now starting the blog I have wanted to write for years?

One simple answer-I was afraid. I had an epiphany this week after reading a book about successful women. The author discussed how many of us are afraid to be successful. We would rather stay exactly where we are-even if we are miserable-because the thought of taking a risk and shaking things up scares us far more than a life of being comfortably numb.

I thought about all of the great ideas I have had over the years that never came to fruition. I told myself I didn’t have enough time, didn’t have enough money to get started, and every other excuse imaginable. That was all they were-excuses. Because the main reason was that I was so afraid of failure, afraid of rejection, afraid of making a mistake, afraid of what people would think of me. Afraid, period.

And with that I found the perfect subject for the blog I was so scared to write for years-fear. I hope that by writing about it I can overcome some of my fears, and maybe help someone reading this to do the same. I already scratched one thing of my 'list of things that scare me' today. Success. I challenge you to do something today that scares you-and to be amazing at it.