There comes a time when we have to decide to be brave or stay safe. I have long considered writing about our lifestyle choices, but never could bring myself to be brave enough to do it. Opening ourselves to share our passions, interests, shortcomings, or beliefs is no easy task. My fears have centered around how others might not understand us or judge us in addition to not knowing what I could be getting myself into.
Writing has always been a favorite outlet for me. It was in the sixth grade when I started writing regularly each night in a journal. I continued this habit for several years until life got busier and the discipline of writing was lost. It's never completely disappeared though. From time to time it crops up, particularly in times of need. When my family relocated to the PNW, I wrote a lot. It helped ease the grief of the transition.
Among the greatest things I've ever done with my life was making a conscious decision to pursue a simpler more meaningful life free from the distractions of possessions or a particular career. Neither possessions nor careers are inherently bad, but they can consume us in ways that cause us to lose sight of relationships or personal self-care and growth, or the needs of the world at large. In 2006, Benjamin and I decided to begin the process of shedding all that we deemed to be excess for our own lives and to recalibrate our lives to reflect our deepest held values.
Because of the life-changing power of such a lifestyle change, it has long been something I've wanted to put words to. How it all came about through the years is another story (many stories in fact), but it was such a huge undertaking for me (physically, in the amount of time it took to implement; and emotionally in the amount of mental and heart processing that I had to do) that I hardly knew how to make sense of it all and write it out, I just knew that someday it would be inevitable.
Recently I read Joshua Becker's post 15 Reasons I Think You Should Blog. It felt to me like a personal invitation to act on a desire I'd been carrying in me for years. Shortly thereafter I began reading Linchpin by Seth Godin. Seth's writing helped me in a few ways. First, he gave my fear a name and told me what to do with it (acknowledge it, then proceed). It's real! It exists! And it will shut us down every single time... if we let it. Second, he makes an excellent case (as Joshua did in his post) that we need to create in order to grow. After convincing me that I have it in me, and that I am more than capable of accomplishing what I dream of creating, Seth called my bluff and told me that "real artists ship."
Because it's so easy to get hung up on fears, doubts, or worries, we fall short of realizing our full potential. Thanks to Joshua's gentle and passionate encouragement, and Seth's no-nonsense call to action: I shipped this week. When inspiration for a post came, I sat down and wrote it, installed Wordpress on my site, downloaded a theme, and went live. At the time I went live: my page wasn't perfect (in fact it had bugs... I know almost nothing about web coding), and I only had one post, nothing else. But there was something exhilarating about getting it shipped. Suddenly, ideas started coming for pages to add and posts to write. By choosing bravery and acting on it, a creative flow had space to follow.
If you have been sitting on an idea that you are passionate about I hope that my story, and the links from Joshua and Seth, will build up some bravery in you to take your next step too.