So what keeps you from creating?
What keeps you from attempting big things and setting great goals?
Fear.
Fear of seeming insignificant. Fear of being passed over. Fear of failing.
You see, we most ignore the things we fear.
A story.
In this post I detailed a little bit of my experience of my site being hacked. Malicious code and malware was added to my site, and my web host ended up shutting down my blog. I paid to have the bad code removed, but there were some bad people (or bots) that kept attacking my site. So I purchased a new WordPress theme and added lots of counter measures to keep my site very secure. Even I have trouble logging on to it sometimes.
By the time the dust had settled, I realized that my site was not the same.
I normally got a certain number of unique views per day. They were just a drop in the bucket for a large blog, but I was happy with where I was. I was on a growth track. But after the hack, my numbers dropped significantly. I poked around on the backend of my blog to try to figure out what the issue was, but I couldn’t seem to make sense of what had caused this huge dip in my traffic.
Honestly, I got a little depressed.
I didn’t even want to log in to my site, not to mention do any writing, because I didn’t want to be confronted with the reality that it was an injured bird.
You see, we most ignore the things we fear.
So I stopped creating.
For three whole months.
Have you ever been there?
It might be a degree that you’ve been thinking about getting. Perhaps it’s a book that God has placed on your heart. Perhaps it’s a business you’ve been thinking about starting, or it’s some other, seemingly giant goal. The truth is that it’s scary. And you’d rather not stare those giants in the face.
It’s easier to ignore them and pretend they don’t exist.
That’s exactly where I was.
But then something happened to me. I reminded myself of why I started writing to begin with:
because I wanted to process and learn better;
because I enjoy the simple act of stringing words together;
because God has built me to create.
I decided to jump back into the game and ignore the stats.
What’s been the result?
I started to enjoy the purity of writing, and contributing, and creating again. And somewhere along the line I figured out why my views had been so low and was able to fix the problem. I started to get excited about the future of this site again and I put some book ideas down on paper.
Is this a fairy-tale ending? Not at all. There’s still so much to work on.
But I think this is the bottom line for me and a lot of you: don’t sit on your goals. Don’t wait until things are perfect before you begin. Don’t worry about the giant in the distance. I’ve learned that most things no longer seem giant if you’re taking tiny and progressive steps in their direction.
And even if it seems like you’re failing in your craft, keep going. Keep creating. Because that’s what artists, and builders, and writers, and people do.
So what about you? Is there something you’ve been avoiding because you’re afraid to fail? To leave a comment scroll below or click here.
[image by Charlenne M Simmons]
