Remember those glorious stay-up-til-wee-hours phone calls with friends where you’d talk about anything and everything or just literally sit there while you played your own video games or went about your day? It was sometimes just comforting to hear them breathe.
Few and far between those calls are these days (but Facebook and other tech co’s are coming out with video hardware for this), but I just was lucky enough to stay up until 3 am chatting with a long distance friend. Unlike back in the old days when the phone lines (and maybe a fax if you were fancy) were the only media, our conversation was aided by Facebook messenger, texting and hyperlinks.
When the conversation came around to beauty (and my issues with it, which maybe I’ll blog about another time), my friend sent me this quote pic on Facebook (hover to read Alt text):
In my 2:30 a.m. giddy haze, this wisdom dropped on me like a ton of bricks. So many years I’ve been told about the Buddhist concept of acceptance, been exposed to the concept of “radical acceptance” and have read tomes about optimism, realism etc. etc. and none of it was so succinctly said.
The beauty of this quote (see what I did there?) is that it is applicable to any situation. Don’t be afraid to be a bad writer. Don’t be afraid of being under-qualified for that job. Stop equating perfection with good enough, and know that good enough is MORE than enough to get the job done.
I had another lovely conversation with a friend today. We took a brisk morning (decent hours!) walk for exercise and touching base. We talked about the concept of feeling safe. Both she and I are freelancers, and whew, Fam. Freelancing ain’t for the weak. Referencing this quote, I suggested, what if we just accept that we are not safe? What if we start with the idea that the world is NOT A SAFE PLACE? Would that put our paralyzing fear in perspective? You know. Maybe. Acceptance does some crazy things.
This is, for me, another step to confidence in writing fiction.
What are you going to accept?
Image by JL G from Pixabay
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