I think we (and by we, I mean me) have this implication that you start a website and you’ve mastered something. You know it good and hard and you’ll spread your knowledge like a fountain of water on a hot summer day.
Every so often, I feel like I have to remind my readers of something small but important: I do not have it all figured out.
If I ever tell someone I mastered college, I give you the full right to slap me upside the head. Because it’s just not true.
It’s because I crashed and burned and picked myself up, found the hydrogen peroxide in the medicine cabinet, and let my scars heal that I founded HUGstronger.
It’s because those scars tear open on Monday nights when I break my $30 printer and it’s the last in a string of missteps that leave me feeling like I have nothing figured out.
It’s because I believe in life-long learning. I believe in storylistening. I believe in believing in something so much your heart aches when you realize how many thousands of people are sitting in front of their bedroom mirrors, pinching their love handles or scrunching their eyebrows or contemplating just ripping the thing out of the wall altogether so they don’t have to look at a failure.
It’s a word I use too much. More than I deserve to. And certainly more than any single person reading these words deserves to.
I knew this when I was in sixth grade and almost let fear paralyze me from doing what I loved—competitive gymnastics. I knew this when I cut up my knees every week trying to hurdle fast enough to qualify for the championships.
I knew this when I opened my browser one night in December and thought about what it might feel like to be more than a failure. To be somebody’s backbone for a second. And how it might feel to say you started something that let someone else sleep soundly through the night.
I have never slept soundly. Maybe you haven’t either. Maybe we are just wandering through this world, putting our fingertips to work on the things we find most important, and we shouldn’t be apologizing because we’re still figuring things out.
Do you think the professional marketing blogger knows what next week’s trends will look like? Does Apple know how long it’ll be until people stop buying iPods? Does Nike know if we’ll forever want to be impulsive and active and just do it?
No. Most certainly not.
All we can do is storylisten. And digest the idea that we do something not because we have it all nailed down but because we so badly wish we did and how can we sit back and not push forward? How can we stop growing?
We can’t. Please tell me, we can’t.
By the way, every month I send out a short + sweet newsletter brimming with cool finds related to the monthly theme. It'd be stellar if you subscribed. If it's not worthy, it doesn't go in the newsletter. That. Simple.