Coming clean

For the last several months, I’ve run an online work group called GET S*** DONE. I facilitate it, but I also use it myself to make meaningful progress on important things in my life.

But I have to come clean.

I realized this past week that I hadn’t been utilizing the group as it was envisioned or at its full potential. I have indeed been showing up most weekdays. And I do get stuff done there, from client notes, special work projects, laundry, and dishes. I rarely am wasteful or lazy with that time.

But I haven’t actually been using it to work on the thing that feels most alive for me, and yet I resist and delay time and time again. I haven’t been using it to realize a confronting dream, vision, or path. I haven’t been using it to make progress on what’s really most important to me creatively and professionally.

I’ve intended to use it to write. I’ve supposedly been writing a book for years now, but rarely make progress. I aspire to write a short essay for you once a week, and yet it’s often more like once a month, if that.

I haven’t been writing because it’s uncomfortable. It brings up insecurities. It’s hard to get right. It often makes me feel out of my depth. Because of all that, it requires a lot of energy to get myself started with writing. I usually find some excuse not to.

This week, I really committed to using that time to write, every day, for at least 30 minutes. I found other time throughout the day to tend to all the other things.

It didn’t take long to remember that though part of me dreads and avoids writing, another part really enjoys it and finds it fulfilling. After I get over the initial dread, I often quickly get into the flow. It feels creative and challenging. It feels like I’m honoring an important creative impulse within me. And the more I do it, the easier and more fun it gets, and the more successful I feel.

For me, more than anything, I want to use this space as a practice in trust. I want to trust that that stomach-churning blend of passion, excitement, dread, and fear points me down my right path. Every time I find some excuse not to do the thing, I am just showing that I don’t actually fully trust myself. Every time I show up and put in the work, the universe nudges me along toward what I most want for myself.