Every now and then there are words that ring so true that they stop you in your tracks and you feel as if you’ve stumbled across a secret key to unlock your own universe. It is Sunday. I am reading the next installment of The Happiness Project. The words are: “but I didn’t want to be the novelist who spent so much time writing his first sentence that he never wrote his second.”
Oh dagger to thy heart. In one fell swoop this humble pop psychology, change-your-life-by-setting-little-goals-each-month book has summed up my last year. A frustrating year of paralysis and standing still whilst moving. Like reaching a career high, yet feeling none the wiser. Like making a promise to focus more on family, but still only wading into unknown waters without actually taking the plunge. Even mundane symptoms which include starting many blog posts, redrafting them a million times over and then never letting them see the light of digital day.
A first sentence polished and perfected; a second sentence never following, seems like an awful waste of life. So where to next?
Take this post and put it out there. Forget about spell checking, don’t let it sit in the elephant grave yard whilst searching high and low for the right photo, don’t wait until the dishes are done, the bed is made or any other first sentence distraction. Follow fortune cookie logic that declares that many a mis-step was made by standing still.
Stop. Standing. Still.
