I have drawers full of notebooks, beautiful notebooks – with leather-bound covers, colourful covers, covers with intricate designs – all empty. I find them in shops, order them online, even make them myself, & how I enjoy collecting them, dreaming of all the perfect things I will one day write & draw in them – but that’s just it: “one day” never comes. Whenever I open to that first page, pen in hand, I freeze. That blank white page, so bright and pristine, so limitless in its possibilities – is paralyzing. Terrifying.

I just know that the moment I write something, I’ll ruin it. My scratchy scrawls will look so ugly on that lovely white surface; I’ll make mistakes & write things wrong & ruin the beautiful white page – the entire book! So why bother? Why start? Why not just burn the book and forget the whole thing before I go ahead and embarrass myself (again, because, of course, I know all of this from personal experience)?

In much the same way, I’ve started blogs before. I’ve created beautiful blogs with gorgeous themes, spent hours agonizing over the perfect header – only to freeze at the prospect of that first post – terrified I might screw it all up with one wrong word.

And here I find myself again. I actually created Follow the Sweetness more than a decade ago, but never followed through with it. I had a grand vision, & I froze at the prospect of all the possibilities – which one? – because the moment we begin to write is the moment infinity gets shoved into crude, tiny boxes. Words that will never perfectly convey our meaning. Words that may change in meaning over time.

But then I remember what a blank page meant to me when I was a child with a fresh piece of paper (or a lampshade or a freshly-painted wall). There was no stopping me – I’d just grab whatever was handy – paints, crayons, markers, dirt, food – and go for it. And it was so much fun!

So now, I give myself permission to be this kid again, to play here in all my messiness & imperfection, to celebrate my crazy quirky nature because there’s never been a better time to celebrate being human. And I don’t know about you, but I find it’s getting harder to stifle the creative impulse these days – it’s like trying to knot up a firehose!

And for the record, I just want to say I’m not trying to convey an image of perfection here; following the sweetness isn’t about sugar-coating our journey – it’s not all about sweetness & light. My life isn’t perfect. I’ve got dishes to do & the toilet needs scrubbing; I get stinky sometimes, & I often suffer from an incapacitating anxiety. Yet, amidst the mess of a day, there is sweetness to be found – often in the most unexpected places.

So let’s go out and jump in mud puddles & see what happens – we’ll never know unless we write those first coupla words; we’ll never know unless we start.