You’re Already Ready!

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So, what’s You’re Already Ready about? Well, it’s a book that’s being written, so that’s Thing One. That book is non-fiction, and it’s about how you – yes, you! – are already ready to do what you want most to do, whether that’s to start a new business, to learn to scuba dive, to write a novel, or to teach ballroom dancing.

Here’s the truth: you’re never going to feel confident enough to start. Ever.

You’re never going to feel like you’re ready to make the leap, no matter what you want to leap into.

And once you start? You’re never going to feel like you’re good enough to keep going.

Asking people to tell you that you’re ready? It’s going to feel good for the moment, and then you’ll go right back to not believing what they say or forgetting that you believed it for a moment.

So I’m not going to waste your time by encouraging you to believe you’re ready.

Instead, I’m going to remind you, over and over again, of one thing:

You don’t need to feel like you’re ready.

(The actual truth is that you already are. But you’ll never feel that way, so you can’t waste time worrying about it.)

You just do the thing. One tiny step at a time, you inch your way toward being the person you want to be.

Those tiny steps add up. If you live in New York and you walk a mile every day toward California, you’ll eventually end up there, even if it takes you almost seven years. (That’s one of the tricks, you know. Take the smallest steps you possibly can. Eventually, you crest a hill that you were scared of, and you start moving faster on the next downhill, even though you never meant to. But don’t worry about that now. A single step is all it takes at first.)

So, the book You’re Already Ready is about punching resistance right in the snoot. It’s about showing up and doing the work, even when you don’t think you can. Okay, especially when you don’t think you can.

But that’s not what the podcast is about, or at least, not entirely. There will be some of that good stuff as I work on the book. I’m going to be exploring what this all means for myself, and I’ll share it with you.

Even more, though, the podcast is an audio-diary – kind of a blog for the ears.

See, I’ve MISSED my blog. I started it eighteen years ago when I could only dream of being a full-time writer. In a very large part, it’s WHY I’m a full-time writer now. Putting my words out into the world was how I found out that I wouldn’t die if I did. That was way back in 2002, two years before blogs became mainstream, and yes, I do mention that as a point of pride.

My middle sister, Christy, told me about this thing called a Web Log, aka a blog. I told her I couldn’t imagine who’d want to read the thoughts of strangers online (she’s the same sister who told me about Nanowrimo, four years later — I’m very grateful to her and that she doesn’t mind when I tell her something is a bad idea that turns out to be the best idea ever. She was right about the Spice Girls, too.)

I just wrote about my life on the blog, and it turned out that yes, people did want to sit in my virtual armchair and chat with me about my stories (more than a million people a year, in Yarnagogo.com’s heyday). I made so many friends through ye olde blogge (maybe you?), and a ton of those friends and I are still connected.

This was still seven years before Facebook would catch on, when everyone got their own little platform from which to tell stories and secrets and conspiracy theories. Me, right around then, I defected to Twitter. That’s where I told my stories and tried to make people laugh or, just in general, tried to connect, always the thing that’s one of my highest priorities.

But sometimes it makes me sad, actually, that I’ve written almost 80,000 tweets on a platform I don’t own, and can’t easily scroll back through.

And eventually, all the attention I put into my blog waned, and then stopped altogether.

Since my first book was published in 2010, I’ve felt too busy making words for a living, and I let go of writing here as a creative outlet.

I really miss it.

I go back to posts every so often, just to read what life was like back then. I love reading about when Digit came home after walking to me for four months. I like to read about getting engaged to my wife, and about our wedding, and our second wedding, and our third wedding. I like to read about when she went on tour with her band in Europe. I like to read about when I fell in love with Clara, the first dog of my own. And when I got to quit the day job!

I’ve done almost no blogging since I quit, since 2016, when I became a full-time writer. A lot of that has to do with the fact that I’ve been really preoccupied with making sure I bring in a living that can keep our roof over our heads.

But I want to capture those moments, big and small, that make up my life. That show motion, and intent, and dreams. For the first six years of my blog, I wanted to write books but couldn’t. Then I did (love you forever, Nanowrimo). I kept doing it, and now I’m here, at another big crossroads in life.

We’re moving to New Zealand!

This is arguably a bigger move than changing careers, and it’s absolutely terrifying. We don’t know if we’re making the right decision.

But this is true:

We will never feel confident that this is the right choice.

We will never feel ready.

And this is also true: We’re already ready.

Except, of course, we are by no means ready in practical terms. I want to chronicle this journey here, reviving the blog and making the blog into an audio-diary of sorts, which you can follow on any of your favorite podcatchers.

And as I go, I really want to hear from you:

What are you going to do next? What are you not ready to do? What aren’t you certain about? What do you lack confidence in?

Take a step toward it. Tell me about it? (Subscribe here to be kept apprised of The Big Stuff! I read and respond to all of my emails, even though it might take me a little while.)

I’m so glad you’re here. Let’s leap into something new, together.