Flying On The Fringe

Quote of the day: Feeling a few butterflies is the beginning of any great new adventure. Matthew “Kaboomis’Loomis, author, buildyourownblog.com

Welcome to my very first ever blog post! I have been planning this for probably five months or more, but taking the plunge and actually doing it terrified me. I created an entire shopping list of excuses for postponing creation of the blog, but underlying them all was fear.

This week I took the first real step: I set an appointment with my son to help me set up the physical website. That gave me a deadline. I still almost chickened out. While he was sitting beside me waiting for me to tell him what I wanted, I went surfing, claiming I needed to know a little more about what was involved so I would be able to understand what he was recommending to me. In my Internet travels I came across Mr. Loomis’s site, where he leads you step by step through creating a blog. You actually create it as you go through his steps.

I confess I only got through step 2 on his website, because I got excited and actually started! Of course, the first thing that happened was that I wanted a layout that was far more complex than the basic templates, so my son had to do quite a bit of work on it after all. But I took the plunge!

We all deal with fear when starting on a new quest. But if you allow the fear to conquer you, you will never move forward, never accomplish anything. Failure is a step in learning. When I joined Mid South Writers Group nearly ten years ago, I really had no intention of writing a book. I was intrigued, though. A story had been floating around in my head for years before that, but putting it to paper? Probably not for me.

Of course, my writers group had no intention of letting me off so easily. And so, soon I was writing it down. And learning the things I was doing wrong. But with work, failures turned into success, and now my first book is scheduled for publication early in 2017.

So embrace the fear, stare it down, defeat it.