Putting it out there

It took me months to find the courage to publish this blog and let people know about it.

You’ll see that if you look at the dates on the foundational posts, from last fall. I had a couple of friends read them and give me some feedback, trying to use that to work up the courage. Despite their encouragement, I didn’t get over the hump.

People from a coaching group I’m a part of were also encouraging, saying they couldn’t wait to read it. I knew some of the topics I’ll cover will be meaningful to them, help them. I was so moved by their words. Did I release the blog then? No.

Late in the fall I took a four-week trip, then returned home to start moving out of my city condo in order to rent it. That gave me the permission – no, the excuse – to postpone putting the blog out there.

Even now, I’ve had ten days since the end of the move and my procrastination continues. Any task I can think of has been taking precedence. I’m running out of these other tasks, or can no longer believe that they are sufficiently pressing.

Where does this reticence come from? Not obvious at first. I’ve had extensive experience putting creative work out there into the world, for both criticism and praise, as an architect. Architecture school is five years of criticism, most of it pretty challenging. An architecture student learns pretty quickly to mine criticism for flakes of gold. My career included public meetings in Boston, notorious for angry residents, and I learned to get through those without fear. (Recently I saw where the Boston Mayor’s office reached out for coach recommendations, to support a beaten-down (my words) urban planning staff.) My work included endless professional writing as well, and putting it in front of panels of people for analysis.

But professional writing is not personal writing. So much of my transition since leaving employment in February, 2022 has been about building up an anemic personal identity, one that had nearly starved to death at the expense of my professional life. There is a wall in me that my persona is hiding behind, and I’m chipping away at it. Putting this blog out into the world is taking out a big portion of that wall, and that requires a lot of energy to do. It’s something to work up to.

I’ll add that in my world growing up, there wasn’t my much room for my voice, my interests, my influence on the direction of things. Some of that was my particular situation, and some was of the time. I’ve been able to take the reins in many areas of my life, though not as much in terms of putting my personal thoughts out there -and thinking that they matter.

And of course there is the fear. Fear of being vulnerable. Fear of rejection. Fear of failure. That is at the root of it all.

So much of life is facing the fear and doing it anyway. In some areas of my life I’m very good at it. I’m struggling a bit with this one. However, do it I will. Just. Do. It.

In putting this blog out there, I am transcending fear with the knowledge that I can handle whatever comes. This day’s transcendent moment.