Let's Start At The Beginning

I woke up this morning feeling better than I've felt in a long time. Maybe the passing of that distant storm, Claudette, washed me free. Who knows? Not me, I'll tell you that.

But Jessie and I went to yoga together and she was amazingly strong and flexible for someone who had knee surgery five days ago. It's a gray day and not very hot and it was soothing and peaceful doing yoga with my daughter with the trees and gray sky outside the windows of my yoga teacher's house.

I can never figure out what triggers anxiety and causes it to dissipate. I know I have some very concrete things I want to to do today. I started, finally, on a baby quilt for Lily's baby. I am not a quilter but that's never stopped me before. I am a cloth-tearer and measure-by-eye sort of woman and I'm not good at working out patterns in my mind and I don't really like to follow patterns either. Back when I was a young hippie mother I'd just make baby blankets with flannel and denim and use old blankets for the inner layer and they turned out beautifully but I was afraid to start Lily's baby's quilt because nothing in the world that I could make would represent how I feel about that baby. Nothing would be good enough.

So there. I have accepted that fact. Just go ahead and make something, knowing it's not going to be good enough or represent the love I have for that child already. Just do it.

Swish!

And so I started. I just started ripping strips and sewing simple blocks and then another idea came to me and I'm working with that and by golly, it's going to end up being a quilt and that is that.

My yoga teacher is an award-winning quilter. Her quilts are works of art. She's one of those very perfection-oriented people whose squares are measured to the millimeter and who then appliques flowers and bugs and beautiful things onto the quilt top she's made from her perfect squares. Having been exposed to her quilts probably had something to do with my reluctance to start. Knowing what a quilt CAN look like, I realize I am not capable of making such art with fabric, thread, knowledge and skill. But what I can do is make something warm and soft for this coming baby that can be thrown on the floor for him to lay on without hesitation. No one will worry about throwing one of my quilts in the washer- believe me.

And so I'm looking forward to working on that today, working with scissors and my old, old Singer sewing machine.

And I have an idea for a little piece I want to write for submission to a magazine. Phew! And so I think I'll start on that too. When I start to think about writing something, my mind begins to work on it and when I sit down to do it, words come. They may not be the right words, at first, but as long as I start, I know I can do it.

And isn't that the way with anything? Beginning is so daunting whether its making pickles or making a quilt or writing something, or losing weight, or even cleaning the kitchen. I think we all tend to think of the entire process and what it's going to require and it's just overwhelming. But once we start, the process so very often seems to have its own motion, carrying us through. And there is no way that anything gets accomplished all in one go, one whack. Unless you're talking about eating a marshmallow. That's easy to do in one simple step.

But life is not eating marshmallows, most of the time. It's taking on tasks that seem impossibly difficult. For some people, that prospect is thrilling and they can't wait to get started. For most of us, though, it's, well, daunting is the only word. And there are so many cliches about this- one day at a time, a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, bird by bird, stone by stone, and so on.

And it's true. Tom Petty said that waiting is the hardest part and sometimes that's true but mostly I think that just beginning is the hardest part. Even if we get stuck in the doing, or fuck up, at least we're farther along the path and smarter about how to do it then we were at the beginning. Failure is just an opportunity to learn, or something like that and so it goes.

And maybe that's why I'm feeling so good today. I've started on something real and I've got something in my mind, cooking away, so in fact I've started that too.

What do you need to begin that daunts you? What have you recently done that once started, was so much easier than you thought it would be? And what are you in the middle of that you started with trepidation? How's it going?

Have you cleaned out your closets? Have you thought about training for a marathon? Do you want to write a book, a poem? Do you want to learn to paint? Have you recently started playing piano? How did you begin? How DO you begin? What's holding you back? What's moving you forward?

Tell us so that we may learn, too. So that we may learn to begin and lose some of our fear. Did you have to let go of the idea of perfection before you could touch the scissors or keys or paintbrush? Did you have to fool yourself into it? Did you find the process thrilling once you began? Did you look back and say, "What was I waiting for?" Did you find yourself in the middle and give it up and admit defeat?

What? Why? How? When? Where?

Tell us.

And I'll go work on my projects and they will be imperfect but I am excited anyway. I tell you, I am.