Draw a circle

Frozen solid until someone makes me cry.

I haven’t published a newsletter in months.

Yes, I gave myself this platform as a birthday present and then dropped it off in the garbage bin. It’s not that I haven’t written. I wrote plenty. I have even written several little posts that I simply didn’t publish. I got scared. I felt fear. I won’t go into why or what because, for me, that isn’t the point. The point is to write, here and now, and then publish it without a second thought and move on with my day.

I get frozen, I hit a barrier that I cannot even look at for fear that it may consume me completely. The smallest things then become beasts who take up every inch of my subconscious and I use up all my energy avoiding them.

I had an unfinished landscape design that needed 10 minutes of work and was ready to be sent out (that was due in October) and an email to reply to that took 5 minutes (from December) and they have kept me from reaching any new clients, or filing my L.L.C or calling my accountant. I did them today and I’ll do the other things another day. and I am writing this today and I’ll write again another day. All that matters is that I broke the thread. I drew the circle.

After getting my landscape design certificate a year and a half ago I froze. My grandmother asked me for updates during one of our weekly Skype calls, and I burst into tears, confessing that I didn’t know why but I couldn’t bring myself to do this, to jump into this thing I was so excited for. She’s not a particularly soft person and she did not join in my pitty party, instead, she firmly told me to go into the yard with my paper and a pencil and draw a circle and show it to her on our next call. I cried some more and then I did it, and it broke the fear and I had a really good pace going until winter hit this year. So here I am, the day after my mother (following in her mother’s footsteps) pulled some not-very soft but very useful wisdom out, resulting in me crying, and then taking the next step.

This is already longer than intended and I will go back and edit my god-forsaken spelling and grammar and then send this to you, promising that the next one will be different and better. I love you.

My Mormor, juicing apples, with about the level of tenderness that she uses for my delicate feelings. She’d hate this photo, but she won’t see it because I haven’t told her about my substack. After all, she can’t be mad at me talking shit about her on the internet if she doesn’t know I’m talking shit about her on the internet.