Let It Go – A Guest Post by Leslie Nagel

Do you have a dream? A new career, a hobby, a skill, something you’ve always wanted to pursue but never felt you “had the right” to take the time to pursue it? For me, it was writing. I don’t mean churning out business reports, newsletters and ad copy, a career I enjoyed for many years. I’m talking about writing novels, querying agents, submitting to publishers, the whole shebang. Every step of the process takes So. Much. Time. And there’s no guarantee of success at any stage. You could spend years finishing and trying to sell a novel, only to see it rot in a bottom drawer. Not an endeavor for the faint of heart, much less someone with a to-do list longer than her arm.

This little essay was originally intended for aspiring authors, primarily busy women spending the majority of their time helping others to achieve their goals, rather than taking the plunge into creating a writing life for themselves. And yet, the core message applies, whether your unfulfilled dream is to teach French to the hearing impaired, enter a ballroom dance competition, go to law school, or become SCUBA certified and dive every shipwreck in the western hemisphere.

It’s important to you; your life journey has brought you to this point; all the indicators point to “yes.” And yet, you hesitate. So why haven’t you done it?

You’ve got to let go of the guilt. Period. This may be difficult to hear, but your biggest blockade to becoming a writer/painter/singer/airline pilot may be you. If you resist making the life changes necessary to carve out time for your dream, then that dream is never, ever going to happen. Maybe it’s because you think you shouldn’t take the time away from what you’ve been told are your “real priorities.” Maybe you don’t truly believe that your dreams are as important, as deserving of care and feeding, as those of the other players on your stage. Whatever it is that’s been holding you back, you have to let it go.

Write it on a cocktail napkin and burn it under a full moon. Scream it into your pillow. Dump it on your analyst, your mom, your tennis partner, your playgroup, book group, significant other, ficus tree (they’re very forgiving). But wherever you send the guilt, you have to ship it hard, and you have to mean it.

If you’ve told yourself that you’re just too darn busy to “do the thing” and please get off your back, you might be doing what Elizabeth George calls the Divine Dance of Avoidance. In her beautiful book WRITE AWAY, she explains: “Throughout my life I lacked confidence, I doubted my talent (even writing the word talent gives me the willies) and I feared rejection…All signs pointed to the writing life…and yet my career development took away years. It constituted an elaborate avoidance device. You must clear your life of the things that keep you from doing the actual writing.”

When I first read this, I literally broke down and cried. I realized that I had spent years doing precisely that: I kept busy raising my family, working at various jobs, getting another degree and launching a teaching career—all of it done well, but with writing a dream pushed constantly—and dare I say, safely?—onto a back burner. By staying busy, I avoided taking the risk of attempting to be a writer.

And even more critically, I avoided the necessity of confronting my guilt about committing so much time to an endeavor that might not bear fruit. Not until I forced myself into the terrifying step of typing “Chapter One” onto a blank document did I accept the truth of what George is saying.

Being “too busy” is a dodge. It is at heart an elaborate excuse, or it was for me. We can pretend that it’s not, because plenty of real work is happening in there. We’re not sitting around eating bon bons and reading Oprah, after all. But the fact remains that we are the ones who decide what fills our lives, no one else. We’ve all heard about the pebble and the jar of sand. Start with the sand, and your pebble will never fit. But put that pebble in first . . .

If you don’t want to chase your dream, then continue making excuses. But if you are truly called, then you have to step up to the plate and own it.

Nothing you try will be successful until you truly accept that you deserve it. Share your goal with your family, with those who will be most affected by any changes you decide to make. Getting their support is critical to your success. Do it tonight, and make sure they know how much this new journey means to you. It won’t be about money, or fame, or being interviewed on the Late Show. It’s just about you. And if it’s important to you, then it’ll be important to the people who love you.

Ms. George says it far better than I can. “I write because I was meant to write, I was called to write, I was told to write. I write because that’s who I am.”

And so we arrive at the question. Are you ready to take that first step? If the answer is “yes”, then let’s get busy.