On jumping in

I made my way to a nearby Reservoir yesterday to partake in my first day on the water this summer. Glorious, I tell you, fantastically glorious. 

I spent the entire afternoon wading around the shore and watching other people swim. I debated for hours whether or not to submerge myself in the potentially cold water until I had a realization: I'm intentionally putting myself on the sidelines just because I'm afraid of being just a bit uncomfortable. 

I think it's easy to become this way - complacent. We all know what we want, but too often we are afraid to go for it for myriad of (often very logical!) reasons. 

We don't want to be cold, uncomfortable, scared, alone, wrong. Those feelings suck. They truly do. 

But, sweltering on the sidelines while other people make the jump sucks too, albeit in a different way. You end up missing out on the deep, exciting, beautiful complexities of life. 

I'm thankful I coached myself into the water yesterday. I swam for nearly an hour, wading out into water so deep I couldn't hold my breath long enough to touch the bottom. I floated lazily on my back, with my pool noodle, and sent up a little prayer of thanks that I had the courage to jump off the sidelines this time. 

And, I made a resolution to keep up my momentum of fearlessness. Every day.  

So many things

I have so many things I want to say, but I feel scared to share my true self. It's hard to admit publicly that I'm terrified to write in this blog and truly pursue my writing career (on my own terms) because the possibility of failure looms so large. I understand that it's still failure if I don't try, but it's not such an obvious sort of failure, I guess. The crazy thing is, I think about this blog every damn day. I brainstorm writing topics, I daydream, I fantasize. But, I just don't follow through. It's a theme that translates to virtually every corner of my life. I want to pay off my debt, but I remain stuck in the spending spirals I've been fighting since I first started earning money. I want to work out reguarly, but I start/fail/start/fail over and over again. I want to eat well and break free from the bonds of emotional eating that have plagued me since childhood. So many things, I want. But, for some reason I will not, cannot, have not, made them happen. I'm tempted to make the same proclamations that I always do: I WILL CHANGE. I WILL BE THE PERSON I WANT TO BE. I'm tempted to shout it from the rooftops. The problem is that I've heard those proclamations very loudly and clearly too many times to count. My ears hurt and my faith is thin. I'm not sure where to begin.