The Simple Pursuit Mama

It’s the dead of winter here in Ohio and frankly, there’s not much life or spring or warmth in sight (yet). It will come, like it always does, but what about right now, when seasonal depression is present and everything feels hard. It feels hard to wait on the warm weather coming, hard to keep pushing through the ‘I don’t feel like doing A THING’ mentality, hard to keep the joy in everyday life. I know you’re nodding your head in full agreement (and if you’re not, I ask, what are you on and how do I get it) , but what do we actually do about. Because there has to be a better solution than muddling through and hoping the season passes quickly.

What if (and hear me out first!) one of the best things we can do is to push harder? I know, we just acknowledged how hard the dead of winter can be, but what if leaning in a little bit more is just what we need to see the value in seasons that aren’t always our favorite? I think that there is such value in a season of stretching and a lot of times we can waste those seasons by taking the path of least resistance. So what if you leaned in? What if you put the extra time into the hobby that was put on the back burner? What if you picked up the new skill that you’re interested in but feel really scared to start?

Can I be honest for a minute? When I started this blog last year, I made it my goal to write one blog post a week. Go check out my track record… I definitely didn’t meet that goal. Part of the reason I haven’t met that goal yet is because I failed to lean in. Every time I sat down to write a pit formed in my stomach (yes, even as I write this one) and fear crowed my mind. What if not a single soul sees the post? What if they do see it and they hate it? What if I’m really just an imposter?! …As you can see, it spirals until I delete everything on my doc and suddenly it feels like a breath of fresh air (*deep breath*). Except the relief doesn’t last that long… eventually the reality that I didn’t actually post anything still exists.

I didn’t lean in. And I should have.

Have you ever felt that? The dreaded ‘Crap. I quit too early and now I’m back to square one’ feeling? Yeah, same. I think we probably all have at some point in life. And that’s okay, as long as we don’t stay there. At some point we have to pick ourselves back up and start anew, key word being start. The most important step in all of this is to just start. Recently, I decided I wanted to sew Juniper a quilt. Quilts seem real scary to this new sewer! So I spent a looooong time searching for fabrics, researching, and watching youtube videos on beginner quilts, until I pretty much couldn’t “research” anymore. Eventually I just needed to start. Don’t get me wrong, it’s certainly a slow process, but it’s a process that I am learning to lean into and move forward even when I’m confused or frustrated. But, I couldn’t have gotten to the pushing through point if I hadn’t even started, ya know? Leaning into the hard isn’t something my brain has ever desired to do, but being on the other side of it, even in this small way, I can see the incredible value in it. It has taught me a ton already and I really just want you to experience that too.

Maybe you have your life together and cannot relate to this. But maybe you’re someone who can. Someone who, in some way, has battled the same questions and insecurities as me. Maybe even though it’s hard to lean in, we still have the ability to do so. Maybe not so much ‘maybe’ on the last one, but more like definitely. You can definitely do things even when they’re hard, because I am doing it right now. I am showing up, vulnerabilities and all, in hopes that you would too. I hope that you make the choice to do the work, allow the lessons to be learned and the grit to be earned. We got this, together.

Cheers, my friend, until next,

Erin