Just Start

Two little words, yet so hard to do sometimes.

Will I regret my decision? Will I succeed? Will I be able to finish what I start?

I have two words in response: Who cares? You will never know what you can do, if it's worth it, and whether or not you will fail if you don't even start. 

I can't count how many crafts I've never finished, or stories that are waiting their turn to be told. Whether or not I'm afraid of failing should be irrelevant. But it's not. It's real. We don't like committing ourselves to things we're not sure we can finish. Why start if we have little chance of finishing? Nanowrimo anyone? 50,000 words in 30 days. Why? Why I ask you?

Because the joy is in the journey, not the end result.

Why do we feel so accomplished when we achieve a goal we've set? Because we finished what we intended, obviously. What if our goal was to simply have joy along the way? It wouldn't matter if or when we finished because our goal wouldn't be determined by an end result, but rather an ongoing love for what we are doing.

This has been a profound concept for me this year and is at the heart of my Nanowrimo story. It was also the means to my taking on a difficult task both physically and emotionally: my boys' Christmas stockings. Each of my children have one, and so will my boys. They take around 70 hours to complete. Each. So you can imagine how daunting it is to start, not to mention the feelings of making something your boys will never actually use. 

But WE will. We have a special plan for them, and it's pretty wonderful. But that's another post for a later time.  Meanwhile...

I started.