Keep Moving Forward

One of the things my SCORE mentor told me was to focus on one thing at a time. It was basically the whole cart before the horse advice.

Ahem.

I have problems with that.

Not the advice, but rather not following it. I seem to get ahead of myself a lot. It's a fault. It's self sabotage. It drives me crazy. I'm working on it.

It seems that through my writing and my relationships I've been working on a lot of personal faults, especially since I started THE BROTHERS. I didn't realize how much of a personal journey writing would become for me, or how much it would force me to grow and change. I didn't realize how often I'd have to confront my deep-rooted fear of failure.

Yes. I have been afraid of failure. I'm still afraid of it, at least a little bit. Now I realize it's more that I'm afraid I won't be as successful as I imagine myself to be. Big aspirations force big actions and my concern is that I won't be able to live up to this image of myself in my head.

But I'm also a bit manic (I know this might come as a shock to you...*grin*). That mania is something I had to fight through in order to finish and publish my books. The benefit of completing one was that I knew I could do it, so it was easier to do it a second time. Now I'm at the precipice of a new endeavor, something I've never done before and I'm more than a little freaked.

My old habit would be to tell myself, "Well, it didn't work immediately or as big as I thought it would, so now to move onto other things." But here's the thing - I can't do that. When I know something is good, I just can't let it go. This tenacity, an inherited trait from my mother, is a blessing. It's a blessing because it neutralizes this fatalist tendency I have and allows me to keep going.

It is possible that I will fail. It's possible that the world isn't ready for my idea or that I won't have enough sticking power to get through the tough moments. I don't know. Whatever the case may be, I'm going to keep working at it to see where this takes me. Already I've learned so much and grown so much as a person. I know things will only get better.