Baby steps are big steps.

Go Baby, Go!

Goal: Be More Like a Baby.

When babies take their first steps, it's often to rounds of applause, with happy, loving faces all round. We forget this, I think, as we grow older. We applaud babies as they do something new for the very first time, something they had no guarantee would work-- balancing on one foot and then the other. It's scary, this launching into the new. Yet somehow, we forget how hard those first steps were, the vulnerability it took to launch ourselves into a new situation. We applaud babies but we forget with ourselves how hard it is to do the new thing. I have fallen victim to this many times-- mostly with writing, where I see the finished, published drafts and think, "I could never do that." It's not the hesitant lines of a first draft though-- and I think we all forget this.

This is not our fault- there is much more focus on people who have practiced their "thing" for years and gotten really good at it. I think it's important to have experts as role models. (See: previous posts about Rachel Entrekin, or Dolly Parton.) We go watch professionals because they're good at their thing and hard-won expertise is beautiful. 

We need role models for starting new things, though. We watch people zipping around on a bike, or basketball players making a 3-point shot. We don't see the messy first practice where that player bounced the ball awkwardly. We don't see anyone wobbling down the street, death grip on their brakes. We applaud for babies taking their first scary steps-- but we don't applaud the same way for ourselves when we make those first scary forays into a new skill.

Last weekend, we rode the Tour de Vine 50K with two of our newest BABBs. It required lots of riding on roads, with more hills than they had ever done, in (amazing looking) new jerseys, that fit differently than perhaps they had been used to, in a new place, with lots of people around. It was so scary that one rider used the word "panic," even as she recognized that she could come out to the same course the next day and it would be a completely different experience because she had already tried it. The first time doing something can be terrifying, and THIS is the part we need to be sharing with each other more (and celebrating when it happens)-- the scary, scary feeling of "WHOA THIS IS NEW AACK!" The challenge is not doing it well- the challenge is doing it at all. 

This newsletter is my attempt to remind us that we need role models for starting the new thing just as much as we need role models for people who are really good at their thing. I'm going to try surfing for the first time this year, and while I'm already feeling nervous about it, I'll also be remembering the badass bike bitches I know who are badasses precisely because they are doing new things in life, even when it's scary. Just like babies!

There are only 5 spots left for our inaugural cycling weekend - come join us to pedal around Sebastopol, then hang out by the pool for relaxation & getting to know other badass bike bitches.