My phone rang at 6:39 am. No good phone call ever comes early in the morning.

It was my goddaughter. She was nervous. It was her first day of school.

“Don’t worry. You’re a junior. You’re an upperclassman. You got this,” I reassured her.

I ran down the laundry list of reasons to be confident: brand new first-day-of school outfit; funky hairstyle she found and perfected on YouTube; -she knew her schedule; she was familiar with the building and how to get to all her classes and the pièce de résistance: she was an incoming upperclassmen.

“Yeah, I am. I got this.” I heard the nervousness start to dissipate from her voice, but I still told her, “nerves are good. They mean you care.”

I’m taking my own advice. I’m starting a blog–something I’ve wanted to do for years. I kept talking myself out of it even though other people insisted and encouraged me. I was nervous to share my thoughts with the world wide web at large. Who cares what I think? Am I a good enough writer? How dare I add to the clutter of the blogosphere?

May 2013, I earned an MFA in Creative Writing. I survived two years of intense reading, writing, workshopping, re-writing, sometimes scrapping, but finally accepting what poured out of my heart and mind and sharing it with my peers, most of whom I regarded as far superior writers to myself. I’m shaking off the doubts and fears. I’m focusing on the positive. In the midst of the constructive criticism from my pieces being workshopped, there were an abundance of positive notes scribbled into the margins and anywhere there was available white space.

School’s over, but it’s time to write on a broader scale. Despite my fears of sharing my writing, I hope there are more people reading this than there were in my 8-12 member nighttime courses at New School.

Not only did my goddaughter provide the motivation to finally start this blog, but she provided the background artwork.

Welcome to my blog. I’ve got this.

*Japanese Proverb