For a few years now, a friend has talked about starting a podcast.
She adores podcasts. She spends all of her alone time listening to podcasts. She asks for recommendations. She makes recommendations. She and her podcast pals discuss them. It’s her number one source of entertainment and information.
The Podcast.
Oh, how badly she wants to start one! She laments her inability to start one. I’ve encouraged her and made recommendations to her. At one point we even met to discuss starting one together.
But she can’t get past *that* point.
Do you know which point I’m talking about?
It’s an imaginary point in our heads. We all have one. It’s a line in the sand, drawn by us, which we refuse to cross.
I figured it out a few months ago.
She listens to well known and well-produced podcasts.
She listens to so many podcasts, she is frozen. She can’t, or won’t, move forward on her project because it won’t be as good/perfect as the mighty podcasts she’s put on an imaginary altar.
Can you relate?
I can.
I waited two years to start this blog. I looked at other blogs and their ancillary social media outlets and their photographs and their styling and their outfits and hair and make-up and I could not get started.
For two years, I watched and waited. What was I waiting for?
I was waiting for me to catch up to the idea of me. The illusion I had about what this blog should be or what my “product” should be or what I should offer or even the idea that I should have an offer.
Jeez Louise…I could have died before taking action. I could have withered looking at other Instagram and Facebook accounts.
My Mom always talks about perfection being the enemy of the good (or perfection getting in the way of getting it DONE).
Look…I ain’t perfect. And, news flash, neither are you. Neither are the podcasts that my friend listens to, or even the other blogs or the rest of the people out there.
And this blog will evolve like I am evolving.
The point is to get quiet and listen. Your True You wants to emerge beyond all the other voices you listen to. The chatter holds you back. There is strength in silence.
I recommended to my friend that maybe she stop listening to other podcasts for a bit…that perhaps the other podcasts were crowding out the space in her head and heart for her voice to develop. If she could get quiet and give herself some time, her fabulous podcast would surface.
The world waits for her podcast, for her voice, for her take on things, for her story.
Nothing revelatory or earth-shattering there.
The world waits. The world doesn’t wait. The Earth spins, stars explode, trees burn and die, and our dreams go on. We can either live them or not.
The pleasure she feels listening to podcasts is greater than the pain she feels not starting her podcast.
The day the pain is greater will be the day she forms her podcast.
That’s the day I forged this blog…the day my drive to create something and put it out in the world was bigger than my pity party.
And here it is, flawed and imperfect and mine.