I did it. I wrote a book.

It’s a first draft and it needs heavy editing before I’d show it to anyone, but it exists. After all those years of doubt and excuses and hearing negative voices in my head, now the question is finally settled. Can I do it? Yes, yes I definitely can. Because I did. My first book.

Firsts are magical, aren’t they? It’s so exciting to do something you’ve never done before.  I remember my first job, my first kiss, my first musical performance. There’s a sense of adventure and danger involved that makes life feel so malleable. You don’t really know if you can accomplish something until you’ve done it. Even if you fail at something, there’s still the possibility that you could succeed in the future. So failure doesn’t answer the question, only postpones it. Can you do it? Go do it and find out.

As a staunch creature of habit, I feel there’s something to be said for repetition. Doing the same thing over and over again invites a sense of stability into life. Practice makes perfect and all. But growth requires something else, a sacrifice of the comfortable and familiar to welcome an opening to possibility. Chaos and order need to be carefully balanced so that life can flourish in the cracks between. It is this push and pull that lets us shape new things. Like a book, for instance.

Now I need to edit it. I’ve never edited a book before. This will be exciting.