Welcome, all!
I am so thankful to finally get this website to you. The idea was planted in me literally two years ago, but I never had a shortage of excuses to put it off. From “Squarespace is too complicated” to “I can’t do it during racing season”, “Who reads blogs anymore?”, “It feels self-promotional”… there was always resistance. Most of the reasons boiled down to my fear that it wouldn’t be “good enough” (doesn’t everything? Just me? :).
Once I buckled down to start writing the mission statement, the process didn’t get much easier. I wrote a million drafts, laboring to make it clear, but my focus on flawlessness and how it would be received — as in any endeavor — paralyzed me.
My struggle with writing started in college. I’ve always loved literature and journaling, so naturally it made sense to pursue an English minor. But any of my college teammates can tell you, nearly every paper was a battle against my perfectionism. By the middle of my junior year, I had enough of the sleepless nights and unnecessary stress. I realized instead of writing for the joy of it, I was trying to prove my worth to my Ivy League peers, professors, and myself. I dropped the minor and felt incredibly relieved.
Privately, however, I still wrote. Journaling was — and remains — a haven for me. It’s a place to sort out my mind and heart, free from perceived judgment. The challenge has been learning to claim the same freedom and confidence when I write or speak publicly, knowing only my authentic voice can connect me to my audience. To this day, almost every time I prepare to give a talk, I go through this cycle: 1) start a draft, 2) preemptively read then attack it with my inner critic, 3) obsessively edit, 4) completely lose track of my original point, 5) scrap everything, start over, then end up with a product much like first draft (ha). The creation of the Running with (He)art content was no different.
In the thick of my frustration, the pastor at our church preached a sermon that exposed my issue all over again. The message focused on the verse: “Write the vision, make it plain, that those who read it may run” (Habakkuk 2:2). My mind immediately flashed back to college, where my ever-so-patient English-majoring college teammates would encourage me as I struggled over a paper, “Just. Say. What. You. MEAN.” I thought, “What is my goal with this website?” Exactly as the verse says — that those who read it may run freely, and leave more encouraged. That’s my mission statement. After that moment, the words flowed at last.
The older I get, the more I realize life is mostly re-learning the same things. So, I anticipate continuing to navigate my perfectionism over the course of this blog – honestly, this was one of my incentives for starting it. Even for this very post, I felt pressure to wrap it up nicely at the end, to offer a “takeaway” for the reader. I shared this with my husband over dinner and he reminded me that not every piece of writing needs to be profound, it just needs to be personal. There’s my takeaway :)