I like starting new ventures at times that make sense, like the first day of the month. It’s neater that way.

I’ve been paying for this domain name and webspace for roughly 4 years, maybe more. I could look up how long, but it’s embarrassing so I’d rather not. Don’t ask me why I never did anything with it. A little bit of busy-ness, a little bit of laziness, and a heaping dash of fear, which makes no sense at all. Everyone and their mother has a blogger page. Who doesn’t overshare life dramas on Facebook on a daily basis? Why in the world would I be scared to write, seeing as how that’s the one thing I can honestly say that I do better than most people I know? (Don’t fade me. It’s true.)

I am a perfectionist. What I can’t do better than the 90th percentile, I usually don’t do at all. That includes most math, which is why I’m cringing at the thought that “90th percentile” doesn’t mean what I want it to mean in that sentence. That’s how I am. I will fret over that sentence days from now. If I find out next year that I used it incorrectly I will come back and edit this post. I will proofread and spellcheck this a dozen times before I post it and there will still be a mistake. Someone will catch it, maybe me, and I will be mortified. No one will care, really. But in my head I’ll cringe at the number of people (which is probably around 4, counting my mom and not counting the googlebots) who saw my mistake and knew that I must not be that great. My greatest flaw is the realization that I am flawed.

But in the past few months, I’ve been taking some chances. It’s always been easy to hop on a plane and go to a concert alone, or to hop in a boat and let Malawi fishermen in various states of undress ferry me to an island on choppy waters, but it’s never been easy for me to take chances that really matter in the long run. So count this as another chance taken. As long as it lasts.