on beginning

We sat in a cafe, shielded from the cold, sipping tea and eating toast and she asked: “So, how’s the book coming along?“, knowing full well that I had not yet begun.

I laughed. I squirmed. I tried to come up with every single possible excuse. But truth is, the excuses have lost their power over the years and the not doing has become heavier than the actual act of writing the darn thing. So it’s time to birth this book. I don’t know if people are going to read it. And if they do, I don’t know if they are going to like it. But it’s not for me to decide. My only job is to write it.

And so… I’ve begun.

“It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.” – Theodore Roosevelt

P.S. Happy Easter, peeps. Hope you eat baskets full of chocolate and sleep until noon.