Sunday Shorts...

I sat down to write and realized I don't really have anything to say.

It happens. 

But I really try not to get in the habit of opening the program to write and then not writing. I don't want to make that a thing my brain thinks I can do.

So I'll just write out some short notes here instead. 

I'm almost done with the longer story I've been doing for the exchange with Dana for the past year and a half. The good news is that means I will have something to post every Sunday for basically the rest of the year starting sometime next month. The bad news is that I have to think about what I'm writing for Dana again. Not sure if I want to attempt another long piece or just stick with short stories. And not sure if I want to do something like I did with this longer piece, which is make it an almost complete departure from what I normally write. 

Having someone I can send stuff to that I am unsure of the work is nice. This next part is going to sound weird but I can't think of how to phrase it so I'm just going to give it a shot.

I know I can write. I know I can write engaging little twisty pieces. And I know that Dana knows I can write. There is no worry for me if I send her a piece that doesn't work because she's read enough of my stuff that does that I'm not worried she will think I'm terrible. That is a freeing feeling. The ability to fail without embarrassment. 

We all need that in our lives. We all had it when we were little kids. We would try and fail at stuff all of the time. Laugh it off, get up, dust off and try again. If you don't have the ability to fail you will never try. And if you don't have a good sense of humor about failing you won't try. And if you don't have someplace you can safely embarrass yourself when you do faceplant you won't try. 

Writing a piece outside of my comfort zone knowing full well I could faceplant and sending it to her anyway has been a good challenge. Not the sending it part, the outside my comfort zone part. I've sent her some awful stuff over the years, that's easy enough. Send the link, apologize, move on to the next.

I'm also back to studying Spanish, I think I mentioned that before. I'm doing it at the same time as Brent this time around. That way we can practice with each other. I'm not afraid to fail with him either. He's seen me faceplant more than anyone in the world has. His take would be that he thinks I have a cute ass so it's just a bonus for him. But it's true (not necessarily the cute ass part, but I do a ton of squats to keep it round, so yeah, it's cute) but the fact that he isn't phased when I try something new and don't do it well. He knows that I will either decide it's just not for me and move on without much damage, or I will take it personally and do it over and over again until I'm good at it. And then probably move on. 

We all need places where we feel safe to fail. We all need people that will support us when we try new things. We all need to give ourselves enough grace to try new things knowing that we won't immediately succeed at them. 

It's okay. 

It's healthy. 

And it can be fun. 

And there you go. Sunday short thoughts. Now I can close this program without feeling like I didn't do what I set out to do. Thanks for being a place I can faceplant in my writing at times and you still come back for more.