The Week I Stopped Waiting to Feel Ready
Readiness is not a feeling. It is a decision your body will argue with every time.
It was a Wednesday. I had been sitting on a draft for nine days.
Not because it was bad. It was solid. I knew it was solid. I had read it out loud twice. The structure was clean. The point was clear.
It was the kind of piece where I could feel the reader leaning in, even in my head.
But every time I opened the document to press publish, my shoulders locked up.
My jaw tightened and a thought showed up, calm as water:
Not yet.
So I would close the laptop, tell myself I would post it after one more read-through, and go do something else.
Something productive.
Something that felt like progress but was not the thing I was avoiding.
Nine days of that.
On the tenth day, I did something different. Not because I felt a rush of confidence. Not because someone gave me a pep talk. I was just tired of the loop.
I opened the document. I did not reread it. I hit publish.
And then I closed the laptop and went to the kitchen. My hands were shaking a little. My chest was tight. I made a cup of tea. I drank it. I loaded the dishwasher.
I did not check for likes or comments for two hours.
And when I finally looked? Someone had shared it. Someone I did not know commented.
The version of me who waited nine days would never have seen that comment.
Because she would still be editing.
That Wednesday changed something for me. Not in a dramatic way.
Not in a “everything clicked” way. In a quiet way. I realized I had been waiting for readiness like it was a bus.
Like if I stood at the stop long enough, it would eventually pull up, and I would climb on feeling settled and sure.
It does not work like that.
Readiness is not a feeling. It is a decision. And the decision does not feel good when you make it. It feels like holding your breath and jumping.
So I tried something that week. I decided I would release one thing every day for five days. Not polished keynote material.
Just: one thought, one observation, one paragraph.
Something I had been sitting on that did not need more time. It needed a door.
Monday, I posted a short note I had written in my journal weeks ago about why women over-explain before they have even been questioned. I posted it without editing. My stomach hurt the whole time.
Tuesday, I sent an email to my list that I had drafted and abandoned the previous month. I changed nothing. Just hit send.
Wednesday, I shared a framework idea I had been developing. It was not finished. I said so. I posted it anyway.
Thursday, I responded to someone’s post with my actual opinion instead of a polite, hedged version. My heart was pounding.
Friday, I published the nine-day draft. The one that started all of this.
Here is what I learned that week.
I learned that readiness is not the absence of fear. It is the presence of a plan that does not require fear’s permission.
I learned that the discomfort before publish and the discomfort after publish are two different animals. Before, it is anticipation. After, it is exposure.
The anticipation is always worse. The exposure is survivable. Every single time.
I learned that my body was not broken. My body was doing exactly what it was trained to do. Years of classrooms, workplaces, and relationships taught it that being seen is a risk. And it was protecting me from the risk by keeping me in the editing loop.
The editing loop is not a writing problem. It is a protection strategy.
And the only way to retrain the strategy is to give yourself proof that visibility does not end you. One rep at a time.
I want to be honest about something.
The five-day streak did not transform me. I did not wake up on Saturday feeling like a new person.
I woke up feeling tired. A little raw. Like I had done something hard and my body needed to recover from the exposure.
But there was something else underneath the tired.
Something I had not felt in a long time. I had kept my word to myself.
Five days in a row.
Not because I was motivated. Not because I was inspired. Because I made a decision on Sunday night, wrote it on a sticky note, and followed through on the days when I did not want to.
That is not discipline. That is architecture and it held even when I did not.
The gap between what you are capable of and what the world has seen from you does not close when you finally feel confident.
It closes when you stop requiring confidence as a prerequisite for action.
You already have the work.
You already have the words.
You might even have the draft open right now.
The question is not whether it is ready.
The question is whether you are willing to let it be seen before you feel safe.
Because safe is not coming and your work is not going to release itself.
Get Untrapped is for women who write, teach, and speak, and keep talking themselves out of releasing. If you are done waiting to feel ready, subscribe. We go deeper here.