This morning, I had a real battle with myself to get up. My baby woke up at 4:30am and I fed her, but fifteen minutes later I was in my room fighting the urge to crawl back under the covers. My inner dialogue was like a standoff between two enemies, with each one throwing verbal punches.
“You have to get up. It’s almost five o’clock.”
“I have a second alarm set. Maybe I can just rest for a few more minutes.”
“If you get back in bed, you know you won’t get up with that second alarm.”
“Well, what if I don’t? I am exhausted. Don’t I deserve to sleep?”
“You’ll never make any progress on your writing goals if you don’t get up early. It’s the only uninterrupted time you have all day.”
“I can try to write when the kids take a nap this afternoon.”
“But you won’t.”
“I don’t even know exactly what my writing goals are at the moment. Besides, my writing stinks. I’m no good anyway. I should just rest. Sleep is important too and I’ve only had four and a half hours.”
“You can sleep eight hours a night when you are dead! Now get up, you loser!”
“You’re right, I am a loser. I don’t know why I bother with these goals. I’m going to fail like I have so many times before.”
And on and on this dialogue went for about five minutes. I even laid back down on top of the covers and buried my head in the pillow (a smart move if you want to have a good chance of getting up, obviously). Finally, the mean girl in my head won and I dragged myself out of bed, eyes burning and body aching. Now, I am here at my computer with my cup of decaf coffee (another five months until I am done breastfeeding and will go back to regular coffee, yay!).
I am writing. I am showing up. It is important to give myself credit for showing up. It is important that you give yourself credit when you show up too.
There was a time when I thought perfection was the goal. Shoot for perfect, aim for excellence or don’t bother trying. But I have reframed that concept in my mind because I don’t think it was serving me well. I’m not saying the goal should be to half-ass everything. Rather, I have determined that it is better to show up, even when I am half asleep and crying inside for my comfy bed and soft pillow and even when the writing isn’t great. It is better to get the words down, to do the act of writing. Show up and do something, even if you don’t think it is your best work. Over time, those little moments of showing up will add up. It is within the doing of something that we get better.
I love reading and have spend my whole life reading a lot. But it has only been in the last few years that I have come to realize that reading is not going to take the place of doing. I can read about traveling the world or cooking or money management until there are no books left on the subjects (not possible) but that will not take the place of actually traveling and cooking and taking control of my money in concrete ways.
My nephew has just started the violin. For the first few weeks, he wasn’t even allowed to use the bow. He has a few strips of white tape on the fingerboard to help teach him about finger placement and he has been plucking the strings to learn how to play a basic scale. He started out by showing up and doing and practicing.
When it comes to fulfilling our goals, sometimes perhaps less is more and slow is fast. Show up and do the thing, even if it is a small amount, even if it takes more time than you’d like it to. A thousand little imperfect bricks will build a stronger wall than a few dozen big bricks of perfection, and it will tell a beautiful story.
