Get that baby off the ground!

On you, on us, on this...

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Chicken Scratch is turning two! After years of dithering and dismissing internal and external urges to write more purposefully, the loss of my intrepid mother finally compelled me to make it happen. Nothing like staring down the barrel of your own mortality to light a motivational blaze under your butt.  

Sorry I didn’t answer the call sooner, mom. I’m lucky to know you would have been one of my greatest champions.

Her grandchildren called her Tutu, the same nickname my brothers, cousins and I used for her mother. So 2-2-22 seemed a fitting date for a bold move.

The two Tutus with their fellas, ~1923 and ~1951 respectively.

For those of you putting off something you’ve wanted to do for the better part of a lifetime, I’d like to offer these reflections:

• No one who matters is judging you. (Oh, how I struggle with this one!) People who appreciate you will offer valuable feedback and cheer you on. The skeptics have other hang-ups. Don’t take up their burdens as your own.

• One day, if your passion project, the sizzling-hot date with destiny you couldn’t wait to embrace, starts feeling like a bag of last year’s potatoes, you can regroup, or break things off. No one who matters will judge you for that either, nor will the world stop spinning. I promise.

• If you wait to be completely ready, you’ll never leave the runway. There is no way to tell, before you take off, how the sky you’re trying to reach is going to feel when you get there. Kick the tires and light the fires! Get that baby off the ground!

• You’d rather end up with a collection of oh wells than a lifetime of what ifs. You really would.

I still have a lot to learn. Like a tourist trying to take in the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel for the first time, I’m a little gobsmacked by it all. Every day, I discover new writers, some who seem to have almost everything figured out. A handful of them are incredibly generous with their encouragement. Some have become friends.

Very soon, I’ll be recommending a few who have made particularly positive impressions (whether they know it or not). You’ll see those on the landing page here. From there, you can choose to explore their writing further. I will simply tell you this: They’re all exceptional.

More than anything, I want you to know how much I appreciate YOU. I add attempts at gratitude to many essays, but since they’re tucked into prefaces, or tacked onto footnotes, they’re easy to skim over. So, I’m grabbing a virtual loudspeaker here in hopes everyone will take notice.

To the paying subscribers who support me for the sake of the work itself, and for the sake of those who are not financially able to do so—the folks who come into this without the expectation of bonus content, or special access, or coffee mugs, or tote bags—thank you.

To the free subscribers, who, like the first group, support this effort by being faithful readers and friends of the flock, who share, reflect, and remark—thank you.

To those of you who stumble across these musings and quietly move on with your day without the desire to make your presence known—thank you.

I want you all to sit up just a bit taller today. I want you to know that you matter. Without you, there would be no this. My spine isn’t strong enough, nor my creative urge insistent enough to show up for a void. I can do that in my personal journals.

When you choose to spend a few of your precious, sparkling minutes here, you’re giving me the gift of affirmation. When you choose to be here, you’re also joining hundreds of others who, for a few moments out of each week, are connecting to a community of thinkers and doers, to a group of people who haven’t given up on the goodness of the world. You’re among acquaintances, allies, and someday friends, those who believe in the power of a collective to make a difference.

The magic here is so much more than the words on the page. It’s what happens when you take these ideas out into our big, beautiful, mystifying, magnificent, disappointing, delightful, frightening, fascinating world and turn them loose. Thank you, for giving them wings.

Happy 2nd birthday, to us!

~Elizabeth

***NB: Photo at top of page by Daniel Tuttle on Unsplash