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What is the hardest part about a beginning?

NaBloPoMo Writing Prompt for January 5, 2012:
What is the hardest part about a beginning?

For me, the hardest part about a beginning is the fact that the beginning is over all too soon.

I love the adventure and anticipation of taking that first step that begins a journey of a thousand miles. If it’s setting up a new blog, I love finding a layout, choosing colours and fonts, setting up widgets. If it’s taking a course, I love paging through my new textbook, setting up an indexed binder for notes, planning my study schedule. If it’s learning a new hobby, I love organizing the necessary supplies, purchasing reference books, finding others to talk to about the hobby.

But then, all too soon, the beginning is over and it’s time to get down to the actual work – the writing, the studying, the learning. It’s not that I don’t want to write, to study, to learn – I wouldn’t have started a blog or signed up for a course or decided to pursue a new hobby if the actual doing of the activity didn’t interest me – but the beginning of any new venture has its own level of excitement that’s unmatched once the day-to-day routine takes over and the shine of newness starts to dull.

That, for me, is the hardest part about a beginning.

Laurel Storey, CZT – Certified Zentangle Teacher. Writer, reader, tangler, iPhoneographer, cat herder, learner of French and Italian, crocheter, needle felter, on-and-off politics junkie, 80s music trivia freak, ongoing work in progress.