My Unwritten African Journey - I Mean Journal

I’ve been hesitating writing in my actual journal. Like I’m saving it. Afraid of tainting it with less than perfect, lame, non-special words. I have a confession to make. I’m kind of a journal whore. I buy SO many but this one was different. This one was love at first sight and we all know how hard love is to come by.

I bought this Harry Potter -esque ‘I feel like I snuck into a cool old man’s secret library’ journal 4 years ago in the summer of 2009 while I was at a street market in Dublin, Ireland. It called to me as so few things Americans tend to spend their money on actually do. I remember it being priced more than your average journal, being leather bound with a real metal clasp and this beautiful white stone fastened to the cover. It didn’t matter. Some things summon you so strongly you literally cannot shake the hold that they have over you until you obey their command. 

For years I would open it’s cover stroking its crisp, blank pages and sigh. I would hover my pen over the paper but could never bring myself to put the ink to the page. It was the fear that whatever I wrote would never be good enough to grace the pages of a journal I found to be magical. Mystical. Almost surreal. My writing isn’t that. It’s plain. Normal. Nothing special. I’d feel the pressure for every word to be eloquent. Perfect. Is it the procrastinator in me or the perfectionist? Or both? Both have their roots in fear. The funny thing is that I don't just find myself doing this with writing in epic journals but with everything I create. Waiting and watching from the side lines for the perfect time to start something. But what every artist knows deep down is that there is NEVER a perfect time. Just time that is ticking away as you stare at the blank page or canvas with your little gem locked away in your mind for only your own imagination to see and judge.

Somehow I seem to know that even if I wrote the silliest nonsense, the worse writing ever to grace the page - it would be enough. It always is because I’m creating. And the sheer fact that I can find the courage to silence the siren Censor and allow myself to pour onto the page is a sheer miracle in itself. Now that is magic.

Now I must think of the first perfect line for the first perfect pristine page. Or I can just begin. Because just to begin is perfect. The process is always perfect. 

During training we've learned more about ThinkImpact's 6 Habits for making every moment high impact. Do you know what the first habit is?

Believe in the process.

Boy do I ever!