Starting something new is hard. It just is. It’s part of the reason why I haven’t blogged in so long. In a world of oversaturation and overstimulation—information, news, images, memes, and so on—what do I have to say that adds any value? What difference does it make if I blog or not?

You can see I’ve been a bit melodramatic, but you can’t deny that I have a point, can you? Why start anything new? Key word: why.

Making anything from scratch leads to playing the who, what, when, where, why, and how game. But as cute as this game is in theory, it isn’t always easy in practice. Take, for example, doing something as trivial as making brownies from scratch. The answers are so simple (who: you, what: brownies, when: now, where: kitchen, why: because fluffy chocolate, how: mix and bake) that the game plays out almost undetected, and then voilà—the prize—brownies.

When it comes to building my business, the answers are slightly more complicated, yet I find they are still simple enough to answer. Except for the why. This unanswered question keeps the brownie-like reward at bay because the why is what gets people to care, to give me feedback, to make me feel like I’m doing something that matters. Which is why I’ve been on a hiatus, asking myself what’s my why?

Tired of reading the word why yet? Me too. It’s irritating only because it’s undeniably important. Bear with me.

On this rollercoaster ride (yes, I will use this overused metaphor because it is annoyingly accurate) of staring my freelance editing and writing business, the hardest part has been demystifying the fuzziness around why. Saying “I like words” wasn’t cutting it. Saying “I want to help people through words” was also lacking. I mean, one, what does that even mean, and two, what does that really do?

In short, who cares?

I was in a series of dips: oh, I’ll blog (but hardly anyone is reading), I’ll publish on Medium (same problem), I’ll leave funny and heartwarming notes on people’s cars (but who knows that they weren’t just blown off by the wind or the people). Hence the rollercoaster. And even when the first real writing and editing jobs rolled in—here’s your chance, EVR…create, write, edit!—the dips continued. I’ve done Dory proud and have kept swimming, yet each little spark of new idea or job completed has been quickly followed by “I want more.” I don’t attribute this to my over-achiever tendencies, but rather to that deep-seated intuition that there’s something more to be done. Something more for the social good…

Aha! Here was but a taste of an “aha” moment!

I was starting to see my why, but I needed a tighter definition. So, I went back to the drawing board—quite literally. I made a value map, writing down things that are core to my being: how I identify myself, what I love to do, who I want to help, when I feel happiest, where I find joy. You see what I did there, folks? I played the game. But the pesky little why was ever the escape artist.

With all these words scattered everywhere, I looked for connections, drawing lines between things that related to each other (e.g., running and healthy lifestyle). It started to look like a web, lines all over the place, illustrating the connections between the things that make me me. What does that matter? Good question. Connecting values is one thing but figuring out how to act on them is another. And to do it all in the name of—you guessed it—why. I stared a lot at this map, my pen patiently waiting for me to have a light bulb idea. But, of course, it doesn’t happen that way.

What really happened is that, whether it stemmed from being cross-eyed or actually inspired by looking at my map (I’ll go with the latter), my eyes kept going back to one area of my map with a few simple connections. I took that as a sign of a place to start. Because, as a wise person (you know who you are) once told me, sometimes you just gotta start somewhere and keep going.  

More later.

(Note to self: work on cliff-hangers.)

(Note to reader: I mostly write this as a way to hold myself accountable to keep going, but—especially if you’re also a self-starter—I hope you can take a little nugget from it too.)

(Note to reader, part two: if you’re anything like me, you’re now craving brownies, thanks to that example. Here’s a good vegan brownie recipe.)