After any computer I’ve ever owned fills up to its max capacity—starts moving at the pace of an AOL modem—I know it’s time.
Move time. Every two or three years, after I’ve squeezed every bit of life from its RAM capability, I buy myself a brand new MacBook.
I then transfer all of those writing projects that I’d been hoarding onto a hard drive and move it to the next newer, shinier version. It is there, in the fresh, clean, and sparse land of computer possibility, that I will finally get all my words sorted, organized, and out into the world.
But somehow, the cycle repeats—I find myself back at the Apple Store.
One day I was chatting with a successful writer friend. I was talking about a book I had written that had been decorating desktops since 2007. I was saying that, maybe, I should get it together and do something with it. She fired off a comment that changed the trajectory of my life. She said:
“How selfish of you to deny the world that book.”
Wow, I didn’t expect that one. It was kind of rude and inspiring all at the same time.
Here I was, thinking it wasn’t perfect enough.
I needed more experience. I had to become an expert first. I needed an agent or a publisher. I needed to do way more work—and 100 more reasons why.
If I want to get even more transparent and truthful: what if it isn’t good enough, I get laughed at or judged, or my friends roll their eyes? And even worse, what if I have to do the unimaginable? What if I need to ask people to help me? I can’t do that…absolutely not that.
What if all those horrible things happen?
What if they don’t?
What if it’s just perfect in its own way, and it brings forth the experience that was meant to happen, and I shift and grow and learn?
And here’s the biggest what-ifs of all:
>> What if someone needs those particular words?
>> What if they help one person or five or more?
Was I to deny them?
It was that conversation that got me moving on the 2007 book and others. It was that conversation that made the shift from “I will get there one day because I need to get things flawless first” to “stop overthinking and denying someone somewhere something they may need to hear.”
It’s really that simple.
One chat over coffee led me on a full-throttle, carpe-diem-perspective shift.
So now I ask you:
What are you denying the world?
Do you have a book or a business unrealized? Perhaps a cookie shop, travel concierge, a yoga mat doubling as a cat bed, vegan botox (please create this), a country song, screenplay, dog clothing brand, or rain catcher?
What is bouncing around in your head, waiting to form? What is that thing that you can’t shake that you’ll get to when you have time or more skills or some seed money?
That thing that lights up your soul that you’ll one day accomplish if you weren’t busy.
No matter what it is, someone out there’ll be super excited that it got out of your mind and into the world. It will help or give enjoyment to at least one person. Who knows, maybe you will become the next movement that humanity needs most. If you don’t try, how will you find out?
If it’s coming to you, it’s you that’s it’s meant for. If it’s you who it’s meant for, it can only come from you.
What do you want to do?
Imagine if Martha Stewart never got around to starting her catering company.
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