There will come a time where you sit down to do “The Thing” and nothing comes. You may be experiencing something like that right now. Well, maybe not right, right now because you’re reading this, but you now what I mean.
You’re all set to do what it is you do and…nothing doing.
I’ve experienced this a lot and I’ve developed some tips and tricks for dealing with it.
First, don’t get caught in the “Big Empty.” I also do that a lot. I’ll sit there and stare at the Big Empty page or, when I can’t do that any longer, I’ll look out the window – not really seeing anything because I’m twisting and curling up inside my head trying to figure out where to begin.
And here’s the hardest thing for me to reconcile in my head. It doesn’t matter “Where” you begin, only “That” you begin.
That’s how this post happened. I like to get these written ahead of time and schedule them to post really early in the morning.
(*Note: 8 in the morning is, in fact, really early for a Sunday. Don’t argue, I will die on this hill.)
So Saturday afternoon rolls around and I sit down to write this and…nothing.
Not even a title.
It got to the point where I contemplated passing it off to Future Me and seeing if he could come up with anything after whenever he gets up tomorrow.
That never sits right with me though.
So I stared for a bit into the Big Empty.
And I stared a little more.
Then I had the idea to change things up. I shut down the blog page, so that I wasn’t looking at the Big Empty screen and turned to my notebook.
Don’t get me wrong, that’s another Big Empty, but I love writing longhand, and I love writing with the fountain pen.
I had no idea what I was going to write about then, but it’s always been easier for me to brain dump through a pen than a keyboard.
And that was the plan: To just start. Jump right in and get going. That’s where the title of the post came from.
And that’s my advice for the both of us – yes, I sure as hell need to remember this as well:
Where you begin doesn’t matter.
It only matters that you do begin.
I’ll see you on Thursday. Be Excellent to each other.
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