Well, a new year is upon us. Which means we all get to make New Year’s resolutions. New beginnings. New ways to improve ourselves and our lives. Which for the vast majority of us, it means making goals that we end up never following through on.

I’m guilty of it.

I am so full of good intentions. Seriously – if all my good intentions (we’ll ignore the bad for now…) were carried out, I’d be a saint! But I’m not. And 99% of those good intentions are unfortunately stuck floating around my already over crowded brain.

But yesterday in church, a fellow member recited a quote that really got me thinking. “Even if you‘re on the right track, you‘ll get run over if you just sit there.” Meaning you could have all the good intentions in the world, but if you don’t act upon them, they mean diddly squat.

So rather than make a list and share it with people and be all “LOOK WHAT I SAY I’M GOING TO DO BUT YOU ALL KNOW I REALLY WON’T!”, I’m just going to start doing them. Not everything. I’d be too overwhelmed to jump on every single resolution I want to accomplish. Instead I’ll start with what I can do. What I feel I should be doing. What I’ve wanted to do for a long time.

One of which is the reason for starting this blog. I want to use my talents to bring a little more beauty and happiness to the world. I’ve been blessed with a lot of talents. And if we all sat down and took a good long look at ourselves, we’d realize we’ve all been blessed with God-given talents that should be shared.

But I have a lot of weaknesses too. I’m so incredibly shy I’ve spent my entire life trying to overcome it. I hate the spotlight. I don’t like attention.

And that shyness stems from my paralyzing fear of failure.

Most people have a fear of heights or spiders or whatever. My biggest all time fear is failing. It terrifies me so much that I’ve chosen to spend most of my time on the sidelines of life; never putting myself out there because when I do fail, I cry. And I hurt. And I don’t like letting people down, especially myself.

But failing is part of life. It teaches us important lessons we can’t learn any other way. Lessons we need in order to grow into the amazing people we all have the potential to become. And not trying is simply the easiest, most socially acceptable way of failing. I’m failing everyday by not trying.

I don’t want to be that kind of failure. I don’t want my kids to see me as that kind of failure and I don’t want them to become that kind of failure. I want them to be the skinned-knee, bruised up, tear-streaked face, dirty-from-hard-work kind of failure. Because those failures learn. Those failures are the ones who become successful. They learn to wipe off the dirt, dry the tears, bandage their wounds and stand up to try again.

So this blog is about failing, and learning and succeeding; perfecting my imperfections one step at a time.

And I invite anyone who wishes to, to follow along and fail with me.