Take the First Step

Thank you, David Whyte. And if you don't know his poetry, you're welcome :-)

Inertia Buster

David Whyte wrote a great poem called Start Close In. I won’t reproduce the whole thing here, just the first few lines:

Start close in,

don’t take the second step

or the third,

start with the first

thing

close in,

the step you don’t want to take.

…

The poem continues from there and you should definitely read it. You can buy it in this collection. Or just google the poem title, it’s easy to find.

Here’s what I think these lines might mean: that we can sometimes postpone beginning because we can overwhelm ourselves with the scope of what it will take to finish. Hence focusing on the first step is the only way to build any kind of momentum. Similarly the first step is also a kind of promise to yourself to proceed which might be why you’re resisting it - so, clearly, you need to take it. Or perhaps “start close in” is really referring to the inside work that it takes to get out of a rut because to start something new often involves leaving something behind. And maybe it’s all of the above.

Getting Unstuck and Getting Started

Why is it so hard? Part of it is inertia: “a tendency to do nothing or to remain unchanged” (from Oxford Languages dictionary on Google). And in addition to inertia, often the actual thing we want to do is, in fact, hard to do. Because it’s new for us. Like Substack is for me. It’s hard. Not just writing something that I hope you find interesting, but actually figuring out how it all works. (My brother-in-law would add grammar to the list of things that seem hard for me. And punctuation.)

So like any new venture, I just needed to do something. It doesn’t have to be perfect, I’m picking progress over perfection.

Here’s my progress report:

1. Consider substack (this went on for months)

2. Create first post and home page (Monday night) – aka THE FIRST STEP

3. Invite a handful of friends (Tuesday)

4. Write second post and try to figure more out about making it look good. This also involved the distraction of investigating freelance sites to see if I could hire someone. Obviously I did not pursue this option. (Today)

Your Mission

This is an experiment. There are roughly 10 of you reading. Think of the power you have! I would love some comments. Specifically, I named a few people in my first post (Trisha, Joanne) but today I didn’t know if I should name Matthew (who constantly corrects my grammar) or Lisa (who is saddened by my punctuation.) (Does that period go inside the bracket or outside?)

Anyways, is it okay to name people and if so, what are the rules? Thank you! (And now I will try to insert a “comment button” if I can find it.

Found it!