2018 is shaping up to be the year of books for me and I. am. not. mad. about it.

After finishing Start with Why, I picked up Brené Brown’s Daring Greatly. It belongs to a really good girlfriend of mine who may or may not remember I still have it. Surprise! It’s still heeeeeere!

The timing wasn’t quite right when it first changed hands but as a follow up to Start with Why, I am digging her message! Why? Here’s the subtitle: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead.

Seems pertinent.

While Sinek got me thinking about my own personal Why (i.e. what inspires me), Brown is pointing out my roadblocks to living out that Why and she’s giving me tips on how to get past them.

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Here’s what you need to know about me:

I am (to steal Brown’s phrase) a [recently] recovering perfectionist.

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Around this time last year, I felt an urge to get back into writing. I paid for blogging space. I set writing goals and publishing goals. I wrote down topics as they came to me. I told my friends and my family. And it weighed on me. For the majority of 2017, do you know what I did with my blog?

I did nothing.

Getting back into blogging was supposed to be like getting back on a bike. I had turned to writing as a cathartic release for years but it suddenly felt foreign and forced. And here are a list of reasons why:

• I am afraid of:
  • being boring.
  • having nothing to say.
  • rambling.
  • publishing misspelled words, wrong words, confusing words.
  • sharing something too personal.
  • embarrassing myself or my people.
  • repeating myself.
  • being irrelevant.
  • being ignored.
  • making someone mad.
  • being mean.
  • giving someone a reason to bring up my past mistakes. <- There is so much this and there are so many mistakes!
  • sounding self-righteous.
  • having my excitement met with silence.
  • introducing a topic I’m passionate about in a way that turns a reader off.
  • tying myself to a person or company or idea that ends up being a failure.
  • being a failure myself.

You get the idea.

Blogging = vulnerability for me and it would seem that what I’ve really forgotten is how to be vulnerable.

Behind this blog, as I’m starting to understand, is my Why. God instilled in me a passion for growth and learning. I’m obsessed. The day I stop trying to do better is the day I die. Writing is my way of capturing that journey (which, by the way, is ultimately life), trying to make sense of it, and sharing my excitement about it with others. I have to say so far I’ve been pretty lucky… Not in doing better, per se, or in writing but let’s say God has given me a lot of things to work on.

So I’m reading this book and I’m developing this grasp of what pushed me to start writing again and I’m thinking about the ways I’ve been standing in my own way. I’m (re)learning what it means to be vulnerable and why it’s so important. And I’m hoping that in diving into the raw space here, you and I might end up toasting to one another over the stumbling blocks of life.

If, not? If instead you find yourself reading through my list of fears and agreeing that I should be afraid of those things, well then I hope one day to be as strong as Rhett Butler walking out the door. But until then, I am going to do me and I encourage you to do you. Maybe some day, we will find our common ground. After all, tomorrow is another day.