False Starts

I’ll be honest – I wrestled long and hard with whether I should go ahead with launching this platform. The past month has felt like setback after setback, heartbreak after heartbreak. And when my grandmother passed away a few days ago, it felt like that was the last straw. I felt defeated, raw and hopeless. Foolish for thinking I could fight back and change the narrative. But somewhere in the fog, I found myself laughing at the validity of this platform to begin with. Talk about a false start.

So, whether it’s a global quarantine to blame for losing your job, or sheer laziness that stopped you from making your bed this morning – we’ve all had our fair share of false starts.

If you google the definition of a false start, like I did, you’ll read something like, “a false start is a movement by a participant before being signaled by the rules to start.”

So, I guess my question then becomes, how many false starts are we allowed before we are out of the race?

I’m going to pretend like we’re having a conversation, and give you a minute to think about your answer. *insert theme song to jeopardy here*

Trick question. It’s not a race. Life, and however you choose to measure it, isn’t a race to the finish. The truth is, we’ll all get to the finish line one way or another. We all get second, and third, and fourth chances – until we don’t.

We’ve become so accustomed to treating life and work like a race, that when we run into our false starts – we’re the first to disqualify ourselves. But what if we didn’t? What if, instead of accepting defeat, we took our false start as a heads-up that maybe our strategy was wrong. Maybe the game plan that we had, would have panned out far worse than the false start did. Maybe, just maybe, our stumble was solely so we could change directions.

My life, for the past few weeks, has seen more perspective shifts, than ever before. The first week of quarantine, I did absolutely nothing and recorded myself in the process. The second week saw me coping with my father in the hospital, my uncle testing positive for the virus, and me losing my job. The third week I started in on this platform, and the following weeks have been something of a blur. Tears, hysteria, laughter, and a whole lot of sunset watching have been the taglines.

So, although this platform was created from the depths of quarantine, the idea of a false start was not. I cannot begin to tell you the amount of unfinished posts I have saved in my drafts because the momentary spark of motivation dulled out.

The truth is, not every start was meant to be. If I have learned anything at all within the past weeks, it’s that life is chaos and serenity at the same time. I control absolutely nothing of what I experience, but I have total control of how I choose to experience it.

So, why do we quit so easily after a false start and how can we – how can I – strengthen my resolve to weather any and all storms that come my way?

I’ll admit, I have a few ideas but the idea behind our false starts is that I don’t have all the answers. Nobody has all the answers. But imagine you could pick up a book, or a podcast, or peruse a blog that had answers, ideas and perspectives scattered around for the world to see.

They say that knowledge is power, and it’s a statement with which I agree. What they don’t mention is the different ways to get it. I think, humanity vastly underestimates the power of a good conversation. The way you learn from them, process them, experience them.

So, welcome one and all to our false starts. A community for us to thrive and to flourish. You are welcome to fall apart within these walls if that’s what you need to do. Stumble as far, as hard and for as long as you need to. We are a collective of individuals, stories and perspectives. Proceed with caution.