Cringe Reps

It’s 9:28pm. I’d usually be crashed out asleep by now and I don’t have a cup of coffee on hand to help me through this.

It occurred to me to skip today and do two of these tomorrow but I sense that I need to get it done, not because the writing will be good but because I need to feel the cringe of taking what’s in my head and putting it somewhere visible.

This okay-ness with writing unpolished and even in this tired state comes from a belief I’m trying to leave behind: That my most useful thinking and ideas will come into the world fully formed.

This is clearly rubbish but somehow I’ve come to believe it.

So, if I'm going to serve through depth and ideas then I’m going to need to get used to surfacing ideas that have lots of holes in them, ideas that sound more like a clunk than an orchestra. That’s not to say I shouldn’t do the work of working my words and ideas. Instead it’s naming that bringing half-formed ideas into the light IS a big part of that work.

So it’s the feeling of these final 6 minutes that I need to learn to be with, learn to wrestle and dance and play with.

I’ve noticed that all of the fear I have about surfacing ideas centres around on thing: being kicked out of the tribe. That fear of rejection seems very deep, but here’s what I’ve realised - I really like imperfect people. I get so much from being around others struggles and inadequacy and from being able to bring my own to the party.

While I am looking forward to having longer than 15 minutes to write - I don’t want to get rid of that feeling of being near the edge, of feeling the cringe and doing it anyway.