Learning Curves are a Necessary Suck

For the past 2 months, my foray into opening and writing my Substack site has brought me both hope for creating a larger community and the aching sense of being a complete beginner. Because learning curves makes us feel really stupid. And who wants to willingly walk into a situation where they feel stupid? Pas Moi!

Except, that is exactly what we’ve had to do every time we wanted to do anything new in life. I remember crashing my bicycle into trash cans and sticker bushes in the alleyway with my Dad running behind my bike. Not a huge fan of bikes now but I can ride a bike.

Anything we desire to get good at requires us to experiment and learn just like that first bicycle ride. Scraped knees and egos are acceptable and expected results. Both my blog at Shalavee.com and this Substack account endeavors were prescribed to me by people who knew I needed writing in my life. And in both cases, I knew they were right.

I’ve been standing at the doorway not quite ready to rush into the middle of the Substack party, but dipping my toes in to conversations and feeling the positive vibes of my future. Allowing for the possibilities to call to me for relationships and impassioned discussions on subjects that I deem matter. Not wanting to rush the foreplay but also knowing that I am looking forward to the communication payoffs.

I’ll be posting the same candid personal essays on Shalavee and Substack on Fridays but I have added a second post on Substack on Tuesdays to bring back to life some of the essays that I felt were important to me. I was so cheered and excited to reread these posts and say to myself, “Wow, this is really good!”. And perhaps this is the trajectory that brings me to a new understanding of what my first book will be about.

And I can start all over with the learning curve there!

Zut Alors!