Thursday 23 May 2013

Seriously Sick

I'm almost embarrassed to admit it, BUT, I felt so nauseous.

Stomach-grindingly, anxiety-ridden type of  nauseous.

Yep! I felt seriously sick as I sealed the envelope, 
wrote the addressee details for the competition on the front and then 
slipped the entire package into the mail box.

Off she went,
 a crisp white, brand new, blemish-free C4 envelope; 
carrying eight A4 pages with a freshly printed, hot-off-the-dawn-press, 
first-time-in-how-many-decades, 
dawn-short-story, 
snuggled inside.

So I did it. Yey! I crossed the line.
 I did what I've been telling others to do for years.
 (Which is "Just do it!")

The whole process did make me have a look at myself though.
I mean seriously?

This morning I had some last minute typo's to attend to, a few sentences to re-structure,
 and a couple of new paragraph breaks to re-consider. 
No big deal except that you could just go on forever.

With grinding gut and considerable fluffing I soon realised I was procrastinating 
and kind of self-sabotaging.

But why?

The obvious responses presented themselves:
 fear of being judged, fear of making a mistake (friggin' typo's),
 fear of any consequences really (good or bad).

I could see 'I' was trying to protect 'Me'. 
(The 'Me' that went to primary school where others laughed and scoffed at her stories, 
The 'Me' that got jeered at by a classroom of 9 year olds because of her accent.)
That 'Me' really needs to let go of her precious little-self and 
embrace her 'pen-mad' BIG-SELF.

OK Done! Please stop re-appearing. We're over.

 (Seriously such deeply embedded, incredibly dumb-ass patterns we carry sometimes.  SShhh.) 

And then the BIG ONE. Oh Yeah! Fear of the unknown. 
I'll say it again "Fear of the unknown".
I'm not afraid to say it "FEAR OF THE UNKNOWN".

Sensitive, silly me - for feeling like that. Cool, clever me - for realising that. 
Big brave me -  for sharing all of that with all of you.

 I don't know what's going to become of my 
sleek swan-like C4 envelope and her slender contents. 
And of course it doesn't matter. 

Where she goes, whose desk she lands on, who reads her virgin content and 
what they think of her inky inner prose is a story still waiting to unfold.

I've done my bit. I've contributed. I've bitten the creative bullet. 
I've moved on to the next shiney & new step. 
The 'seriously-sick-man-just-do-it' shiney step that is. ;-)

Enough for now. 
Tomorrow, less prophetic and more poetic. 
I promise ;-)

Love Dawn
x



3 comments:

  1. Wonderful, wonderful you.
    Well done for throwing yourself into the ring, having a go AND for letting go. Fear of being judged stops many from even putting themselves out there in the first place. Fear of failing stops others.
    It' a joyous thing to just have a go - jump off the step and simply (as you say) 'just do it'.
    Love it - o and would love to read what is enclosed in said crisp white C4 envelope one day too.
    jx

    ReplyDelete
  2. And how many creative others feel the same way?? Real courage is having the guts to share are wobbles and spills and parts of ourselves that we normally don't, can't or won't because it's scary. Thanks for sharing :)
    A Arnold

    ReplyDelete