What if I just... hit publish?
What if I just... hit publish?Oooof, let me tell you – I’ve wanted to start a Substack for SO long. And by “wanted to” I mean I’ve done literally everything except start it. Let’s take inventory, shall we? I have:
It’s unhinged, truly 🙃 But you know what I DON’T have? (Or shall I say didn’t 😏🎉) A single published post. The shower momentLast night, I was in the shower thinking about my birthday. I turn 32 in four days, and a while back I made myself a promise: My Substack would be live by my birthday. NO EXCEPTIONS 🙅🏻♀️ Which would be very inspiring if it weren’t roughly the 28947584th Substack launch deadline I’ve given myself that has come and gone. Each time I’ve had a perfectly justifiable reason that “made sense” for why I needed to postpone. There’s just too much going on right now. Let me get through this client project first. Who knew planning an elopement takes so much work? Better wait until after the honeymoon. Oh, and I really should hire a VA first, so I actually have time to write. Plus, Mercury’s about to go retrograde. Launching now would be asking for trouble. I’m also entering my luteal phase, so... creativity? Don’t know her. And I have to wash my hair today, which, let’s be honest, is a full production. (Okay, maybe those last few were a reach 😂) None of those reasons changed the fact that I STILL hadn’t launched/published. So there I was, mentally adding up everything I “needed” to get done before I could launch and comparing it with the time I actually have to, ya know, DO said things and let’s just saaay… the math wasn’t math-ing 😐 And then - ope! There it was, right on cue - that familiar pang of disappointment as the realization sunk in. I can’t believe I’m going to let myself down AGAIN. And underneath that, a thought I really didn’t want to sit with: What if I NEVER do this? Because I could see how it would happen. I could keep having good reasons. I could keep working on it. I could keep making the plan better and collecting things to write about and genuinely intending to share them. I have plenty to say. There’s a whole automated database to prove it 🙃 But somewhere in all of this, writing my first post had become the task of figuring out and perfectly communicating everything this space is/was ever going to be. And then something in me snapped. I was so OVER being the girl who’s “actually seriously no-for-real-this-time DEFINITELY going to” start a Substack. I wanted to be the girl who just… has one. Who shows up. Who writes. Who shares the messy middle. Who lets you read my words before they feel “ready” (a finish line that never seems to come). And then I thought: What if I just… hit publish? (An obvious thought for many, I’m sure. A novel concept for my chronically overthinking, perfectionist brain, apparently 😂) What if I didn’t have the perfect introduction? What if I didn’t explain my whole life story first? What if I didn’t know exactly where this was leading or how it fit into my five-year plan? What if I just woke up, made my morning coffee, shared what’s on my mind, and hit publish (hiii that’s exactly what I’m sitting here doing now 👋 ☕️) So here I amPublishing it. Messy. Imperfect. Incomplete. There were no rounds and rounds of editing. No agonizing over every word, spending an hour editing one paragraph to make sure it lands exactly right. I just sipped my morning coffee and typed what was on my mind. And now I’m sharing it with you. (Mind-blowing how simple it is, really 🤯) Considering the ungodly amount hours I’ve spent plotting and planning and strategizing the perfect sequence of posts… it’s equal parts liberating and terrifying. Is this the most impactful, transformative piece I’ll ever write? Probably not. But for me, it’s huge. Because today is the day I finally stopped being the person who is going to do the thing, and became the person who did it. I can now legitimately say I am a writer on Substack, wow, how fun 😆 🎉 And maybe now that I’ve ripped the bandaid, I can do it again. And again. And again. Until before you know it, all of those drafts sitting hidden in my Notion are out in the world, finding the people they were meant to find and making the impact they were meant to make and I can look back and laugh about how silly it was that I waited so long to just start. What you can expect hereSo, if you couldn’t tell, this is very much NOT the first post I had planned 😂 But there’s so much I want to share with you. About freedom, and how many times I’ve changed my mind about what it actually means and looks like (it’s different for all of us). About how I’ve used Human Design, astrology and the Gene Keys to come to see myself and others more deeply than I ever thought I could, and how you can too. About how much easier it is to know something about yourself than to actually LIVE differently because of it. And my many (many!) attempts to collapse that gap (Line 3 profile here 🙃, if you know you know). This is where I’ll share the behind-the-scenes of what I’m learning, thinking about and experimenting with in real time. Mostly, that’ll look like:
So if that sounds like your kind of thing, I’d be honored and humbled if you stuck around 🫶 In my next post, we’re diving into Venus retrograde and what this particular transit means for you 👀 If you’re a fan of my annual Transit Calendar, you’ll love this one too! Hit the button below to subscribe, and every new post will land straight in your inbox (I'll only send good stuff, I promise 😘).
And now…. I leave you with this, in case you need to hear this today too: “The only thing that’s doing the thing is doing the thing.”As I sat down to write, I was immediately reminded of this essay from the creator behind Strangest Loop: “Preparing to do the thing isn’t doing the thing.
Scheduling time to do the thing isn’t doing the thing.
Making a to-do list for the thing isn’t doing the thing.
Telling people you’re going to do the thing isn’t doing the thing.
Messaging friends who may or may not be doing the thing isn’t doing the thing.
Writing a banger tweet about how you’re going to do the thing isn’t doing the thing.
Hating on yourself for not doing the thing isn’t doing the thing.
Hating on other people who have done the thing isn’t doing the thing.
Hating on the obstacles in the way of doing the thing isn’t doing the thing.
Fantasizing about all of the adoration you’ll receive once you do the thing isn’t doing the thing.
Reading about how to do the thing isn’t doing the thing.
Reading about how other people did the thing isn’t doing the thing. Reading this essay isn’t doing the thing.
The only thing that is doing the thing is doing the thing.”
– From Things that aren’t doing the thing - Strangest Loop What’s YOUR thing?Now tell me: what’s YOUR thing? The one you’ve been “actually seriously no-for-real-this-time DEFINITELY about to” start? Reply to this email or drop it in the comments over on Substack. No judgment. Clearly 😅 Thank you for being here. I am oh-so-grateful to have you on this journey with me 🙏 Here’s to getting out of our own way and “doing the thing” 🥂 P.S. TL;DR: I finally launched my Substack! 🎉 If you want my weekly-ish posts on Human Design, astrology, and building a life around your version of freedom, subscribe here 👈 |