Honestly

I don’t know where to start this story, so I’ll just start with today. It’s 8am and I’m sitting on my green leather sofa, cup of tea in hand looking out my north facing windows at the oblique winter sun bathing the Chewton bush. The geese are banging their beaks like machine guns against the window pane. I refuse to be terrorized by them, they have been fed. White frost still sits in the shadows, perhaps their water has frozen over, or they have forgotten they are geese and want to come in like any other neighbour and sit by my fire.

So it’s just like any other morning, but it’s this morning. I’m doing what I do most mornings, exercising my habit of drinking tea and writing. I have been writing for 40 minutes now. First in my journal then I change note books and now I’m writing in my blog book. Yes, I like to do first drafts by hand in pencil (a papermate sharpwriter to be exact), then I edit as I put it on the computer. But like every other morning for a long time I have talked myself out of moving from page to screen. Like every other morning in EIGHT MONTHS! Can you believe it? Mmmmm me the coach!

You see I have dug my self into this huge secret hole that I just can’t seem to get out of. It started off with delaying the first follow up blog entries by just a day or two, which ran into a couple of weeks. I laughed and complained about it and asked for tips and hints. I took classes on blogging and social networking, bought books on marketing and found a great website on procrastination. Then it was a month or more and I stopped mentioning it. I played every game in the book with myself. I stopped giving people my web address. I said my site was under construction; it kind of was and besides no one would ever know. I told myself ‘You don’t really need it’ you are getting great referrals anyway. ‘Technology is over rated, face to face human contact is more your thing.’ ‘You are more authentic this way.’

I never stopped writing or having ideas, or wanting to share them, they just didn’t make it to the public domain. So what stopped me? All the usual things I think, a fear of not being good enough, fear of what others will think, of not pleasing everyone, a fear of being seen and heard, of not knowing what voice to use.

But if you are reading and relating to this story you are probably more interested in a different question. What got me on the screen today? What moved me? What got me unstuck? To be honest . . . being honest with myself. Being willing to look at exactly what is right now, not make excuses for it, not justify it, not judge it, and get on with it. To get my feet wet and my hands dirty and to not care too much how I look. Why today? Because it got too painful, used up too much energy and I paid attention to that instead of making excuses for it.

The sun has gone behind grey cloud and its lightly raining. I’m looking out at a gash in the hill between me and the bush. It looks ugly and torn. I miss what was there before the excavator came last weekend. But that gash is where my fruit trees are going this winter. This is how it looks now, how it needs to look before the bare rooted trees grow leaves.

Powerful question

Where am I not telling the truth?
What’s the pay off for not telling the truth?
How would my life be different if I told the truth?