An Iffy Introduction

Hello Skirt! readers. I’m a newly minted Skirt!Setter, and I’ve stared at a blank screen for a while tonight wondering how to start.

Starting out is always the hardest part for me. It’s like there's this gap in time between when things are, and yet still aren’t. It's this murky territory where you cannot ever really know how things will turn out, but there you are anyway, taking a step, poised at the edge of something, waiting to free-fall.

Maybe not everyone feels this way, but for me starting out is always a grin-and-bear-it, leap of blind faith. Whether I’m starting out on a run, or walking into a room full of strangers, or getting the first sentence onto the page, I feel that same wave of angst.

What if? What if I fail, or act like a fool, or I can’t find the right words and the page stays blank?  

It all comes down to that, doesn’t it? To these two little words, and whatever words follow after them.

If we let it, this little insidious question can hold us back, but it can also be the thing that propels us forward. It can become the reason we dare to dream; just as some days it’s the reason we don’t. Or at least that's how I see it, because when push comes to shove I'm always the one to make the leap.

So I'm here, starting out.

It's autumn, where I am--in Northern Vermont. The leaves are everywhere in crackling piles on the ground. In the morning frost coast the grass with hoary crystals, and the days are getting shorter. I live at the end of a long dirt road that I run almost every day, pushing a jogging stroller with two boys in tow. I keep chickens, paint pictures, and am in the midst of the terrifying process of writing a novel.  (That last thing is just another way of saying: I practice starting out every single day. Writing is an exercise in the unknown. And it's the only occupation that I have ever truly loved)

Your turn. What are the things you are afraid of? What words follow after your what if?