Starting Is The Hardest Part. Let’s Talk About It

#MentalBlahDiaries

Heya Friends,

I have been avoiding posting my writing for a while cause I am a bit internet-shy. I am just realizing how shy I am about posting on my own blog. Kind of crazy, isn’t it?

I have been thinking about the first thing I would post since I launched this site roughly 3 months ago. Trust me I have many drafts saved up, but nothing feels right just yet. My problem is that I have been divinely blessed with a deadly concoction of perfectionism, imposter syndrome, and an acute fear of public humiliation which makes it hard for me to “just do it.”

Listen, I have spent enough time with Google Search and Reddit to know that perfectionism is really just a fear of failure marked by a state of inactivity and procrastination. I technically know what I should be doing and how I should be doing it. I just can’t seem to do it. The problem really stems from the fact that I haven’t gotten over the hump of starting. Actually, I am not starting, I am starting again. I used to write short stories and songs back in high school and stuff but for some reason writing for leisure at this point in my life requires effort, brain power, and scarily, a certain amount of care and dedication that does not feel natural anymore. But apparently if you point me to a job resume or a work email and I got it!

My dilemma with posting on my blog at this moment reminds me of how I was afraid to go to the gym earlier this summer. Once I took a leave from work, I purchased a gym membership close to my house because I wanted to continue working out plus as a self-diagonosed homebody I needed reasons to leave to my house.

The funny thing is that I have had several stints where I’ve been consistent at the gym over the last five years. In the last two years, I had become accustomed to going to the free gym at my job where I had an awesome personal trainer who was also discounted through the job. My trainer would pre-plan my workouts, set up the equipment and supply the extrinsic motivation for those thirty minutes to an hour that I booked with her. Really, the hardest part of going to the gym became showing up after a tiring day at work. But I did it and got a lot stronger. 

Now, when I started paying for my own gym membership, somehow the task of going to the gym felt a lot more…scary. Suddenly, the thing I had been doing for a year felt like a different animal and a different beast. I mean, technically knew my way around the equipment and knew what each one did. I just had never really been to the gym by myself in a long time. It took me weeks to actually walk into the gym. I did not want to hire another trainer and I didn’t really know where to look for a gym buddy, so I kind of just waited. 

No, really. I put it off for almost two months till one day I had the thought one evening that I could simply take a walk in the direction of the gym. I did not plan to go inside but I think I just wanted to walk around that area and give myself some light exposure therapy if you will. It was a Sunday evening so unfortunately by the time I got to the gym it was already closed. I noted the hours it was open and walked back home, happy that I could at least tell other people that I finally  “went to the gym.” 

The funniest thing is that my little win on Sunday was good enough to force myself to get dressed, walk to the gym, AND go inside. Once I went in, stuff just sort of felt intuitive again. I already knew the PEMDAS of what I needed to accomplish, so I just had to figure out how to do it in a different environment. I  went to the locker room, put my bag away, found a place to warm up, and went on a treadmill, then I found where they hid the weights. I saw they had squat machines and a whole bunch of other contraptions I had not used before. I simply just went to use the dumbbells cause that was what I felt the most comfortable using in the moment. I did 3 sets of exercises my trainer and I regularly did together, cooled down, and left. I felt accomplished cause my two-month slump had finally been conquered. I came back two other times that week and repeated the same thing. Heck, on the third day, I felt confident enough to try using the leg press machine on my own. Now, I have my notes app with workouts, my last max reps, and a schedule to target different body parts.

So why am I telling you all this? Well, I believe that today I am trying to remind myself that taking baby steps is okay. Also, just looked up at the date and coincidentally it is another Sunday. The plan for this post is the similar as walking by the gym and not going in. I am simply going to write it then post it. Whatever fashion it ends up is how it ends up – punctuation, spelling, grammatical errors, and all. I will not go through it again to make edits which when often when I lose the momentum finish. I dunno folks, I am still at the point where I think stuff I write sounds dumb. We are going to call this a post and dash. But hopefully, it signals to my brain that it’s wasn’t so scary. Plus this is an empty void, who is reading this? LOL. Maybe by tomorrow I will feel so accomplished and that I will want to post something else. The goal is to turn off that little pesky perfectionist switch in my brain in a way that does not feel so drastic or overwhelming.

My whole game plan reminds me of a saying that I heard a few years ago. 

So yeah, that’s it. We’ve officially reached the end of my first blog post on Tobi’s Room. Whew, would you look at that. Thank goodness the first step is over.

See you next time friends! 

P.S. I very much lied to y’all. I definitely did run this through Grammarly for some light editing cause Baby girl can’t be out here looking fully illiterate.