Just. Get. Started. 

      I am often asked “How do you know how to do so many things?”  Well- that’s a complicated answer. Partly because I was a super ADD child and my grandmother and mother taught me to feed that fire instead of suppressing it with medications.  Partly because I want to know how to do as many things as I can and be useful.  Partly because I live alone and I have large periods of time by myself so I have free time.  But mostly because I just decide I’m going to do something and I go for it.  Like this blog.  Do I personally think I am interesting enough for people to follow me or care about what I say?  Not particularly. However, if people can pay attention to someone simply because they are rich, got into a fight once and went viral, or literally watch someone take shit out of a box then why not give it a go?  If nothing else, I get to write out my knowledge, feelings, and adventures in a way that might be more helpful in understanding who I am as a person, both to those around me and myself, and maybe inspire someone else along the way.

     I am also told frequently “I tried that but I wasn’t good at it.”  How many times did you try?  Do you know how many failed loaves of bread went into my compost pile or became bread crumbs until I made a good loaf of sourdough?  How often I have DIED LAUGHING at myself at something I made fell apart, looked awful, tasted worse, caught fire, whatever?  What’s the worst that’s going to happen?  That its not going to turn out properly?  Well, that my friends is a learning experience and you move on. If you try one thing one time and you aren’t good at it and you are so defeated as to never try it again you might have some things to work out with your therapist.  Try. Fail. Try again.  Probably fail again. Wash, rinse, repeat, try, fail…until you’ve got it figured out.  And don’t compare yourself to anyone else in the process.

     “How do you motivate yourself when depressed?”  That’s a hard one.  Sometimes I don’t. Sometimes I’m going to lay on the couch and not eat and have a major case of what my therapist calls the “hate mes” and not do anything.  But I have to recognize that’s not going to do any good.  And after I’ve felt that out I usually decide I can either hate myself and lay on the couch and hate myself more, or get up, take a shower, eat, get in some movement, and work on hating myself less. That usually works. Look around, figure out your triggers, and just do one small thing.  You just have to get started.

       So no matter where you are in what you want to achieve you have to get started to achieve it. The fear of failure you might be experiencing will be replaced eventually by “what could have been” and I’m not sure which is worse.  Worse yet- you run out of time. That’s my only fear, not living long enough to do all the things that I want to do, or learn everything that interests me. So just get started.  What’s one small step today that you can take to start on your goal?  Don’t make the whole plan right now. Just one tiny step that motivates you to the next step, that gets the pace going, and eventually you are running toward your goal with a momentum that nothing will stop.  Just. Get. Started.