All the world's a sound stage.

Dear reader, this storm has cast a strange mood over the skies of my own consciousness. Pitched somewhere between worried waiting and courage in faith, an angled and precarious balancing act, and it’s really no surprise that what I have going on within me (a kind of tempest unto itself) should be reflected in our own Mother Nature…

“Avoidance” seems to be the word of the day. And because all we have is the Here and Now, “avoidance” seems to be the ever-echoing word of all words; the never-ending word that has become my thoughts and my mood.

And this is exactly what I have been talking about in all of my references to the inspiring work of Steven Pressfield—one of my writing mentors from afar. This stuff—this dark, nasty stuff, stodgy and sluggish and threatening never to leave—what Pressfield calls, Resistance, has taken up an old wooden chair across from me at my very own table.

Lucky for me, I remember feeling this same way when I got my first, real client commission.

So intimidated was I to take that first step into uncharted territories, I postponed starting in on the writing for such a long time. I waited and waited, until the deadline was so very much upon me, I had to make a go of it when I was under the weather with a cold or something, and produced subpar work that the client actually returned to me, with the hopes that I could give it another go.

A saving grace, to be sure.

I fumbled that first pass, but the severity of the fumble whipped me back into shape, lead me into a triumphant ‘Hail Mary’ moment, and I’ve been scoring touchdowns ever since (we did a sports-related interview yesterday, and I’m only moderately sorry for the corn).

And here I sit at a very similar type of crossroads, but with greater responsibility and autonomy at my feet, and it’s like hearing the question posed to you, “Will you step up to the plate and be a grown-up? Or will you stay in the dirt like a child whose time has yet to come?”

I still have these moments when I recognize that, in some ways, I’m still behaving like a kid. 

These (avoidance) behaviors are actually leading me away from my goals. They are distracting me or detracting from the progress I am making. And when it comes time to level up, yes, the next level can feel intimidating, because it’s new and more challenging than the last one. And the little kid inside me wants to turn around and go back to the old level, but that’s not how things work when you are trying to improve your life’s circumstances.

So I wipe the dirt off my face, tie my laces and fix my dress, which had gotten wrinkled from all that sitting and avoiding. And when I start—when I simply make a go of it and just begin—just like a miracle, the world that’s immediately around me starts to change.

In my mind’s eye, it’s like being on a film set.

You enter the sound stage when it’s dark. Maybe you think, “What is this place? Where is everyone, and where’s all the stuff?” But you know, despite all of that, this is where you’re supposed to be. So you sit in a chair that’s been illuminated by a dim spotlight, when you notice there’s a desk there, too. And the more you look, the more you see. In the case of the writer, she picks up the pen, and thinks, “Here goes nothing,” and starts to write. And the more she writes, no matter what she’s writing, more and more of the set gets illuminated. Until she finally looks up and sees there’s a fully formed world around her that was all the while simply waiting for her to begin.

Happy Wednesday, dear reader.