#103: My Fear of Blogging

I love below how Marcelle talks of her fear of writing this very blog and --  implicitly --  all the blogs she hasn’t written along the way for a lot of very very reasonable reasons. She asks, “Am I the only one here?”

Thank you so much, Marcelle, for your courage… and, yes, likely opening the space for others. I think many of my own fears have subsided across the past 10-20 years as I took one little step and nothing bad happened… and maybe some good things happened… and then someone here or there encouraged me… so I took another step… and so on… one step at a time until more and more I came to “know” that I wasn’t the only one and my contribution might be in part to create space for others to take a small step as they might wish…and then to realize that if I was “the only one”, well, that was OK too… 

…in the next few weeks, I will offer up the core design ideas and ethos we have intentionally built into the writing that has been happening during the past 16 months and then invite more to join in with gems you might wish to share…

-- Pip

 Marcelle Mettes     marcellemettes@gmail.com

My fear of blogging

Pip asked me some time ago, if I was also willing to share some of my thoughts or insights in this community. I said “sure” and then realized that I had never written a blog before…

When I was around 12 years old, I used to write hilarious reviews of the hockey matches of my team in the weekly club magazine. I had great fun in writing then, but nowadays I do not find it fun anymore to write things down…actually, I find it a big pain in the ass!  It costs me all my will-power to sit down and trust my thoughts to paper… It takes me ages to write work emails in which I advocate on or ask for something!

Am I the only one here??

I’ve always preferred face-to-face interaction in sharing my thoughts or ideas, as I can then better choose the right context for my thoughts, tune my words to audience and fine-tune my message looking at body language. And I enjoy the interaction triggering and sharpening my thoughts and words.

However, for the first time in my life I feel the desire to share my thoughts and insights with a larger audience than the people I directly interact with. In the past two years some life-altering events came by and it really helped me to gain new perspective on who I really am by reading blogs and listening to podcasts or vlogs. With great joy I’ve read all your blogs in the CfC…secretly admiring the natural ease which you all seem to have in sharing your reflections in the writing circle!   

So, for the first time in a truly transformational period these past two years, I feel the urge to trust some of my reflections to paper...to transform my thoughts into crispy marvel & insight ‘snacks’ and see if they can serve others. And now…I suffer from a severe writing block, tortured by thoughts like: “I have so much to say, but can I keep it short & crisp?; How to write from the heart instead of the mind and keep it personal?; Is this reeeeally interesting for the reader?” 

By writing down these torturing questions a new insight presents itself: It’s my typical case of having high expectations of myself and an old fear -which I thought I had overcome- of not being good enough! Because… if I write down my thoughts and share them… they are out there and can be regarded as stupid, pathetic or not interesting…even worse…when people reject my insights -which are very personal to me- there is a chance that they will also reject me as a person…Ouch!! 

But…it’s exactly the pain of some rejections I experienced which has led me to the insights I want to share now! So by starting to write blogs I will try to overcome my fear of being rejected and learn how the new, wiser me can be out there and connect to people I don’t know by sharing my ‘insight snacks’ through other media than the more comfortable face-to-face.

And hopefully, by writing this first blog about my ‘fear’ of blogging, I may encourage others who have similar feelings and further strengthen this wonderful group of people to drive sustainable change in our world. 

…Marcelle

Marcelle's first-person bio:

Trying to be a servant leader in the corporate world, my mission is to unlock the self-organizing potential in organisations to innovate with both commercial and social impact. I’m fascinated with what drives change in corporates and I’m always wondering how I can create space and movement in the system enabling multi-functional teams to experiment and learn. I’m a sucker for systemic thinking and generating data-driven customer insights & problems to solve. It gives me great joy to coach and develop people in reaching their potential and to help them converting ideas into action.