Getting Started to Get Started

With apologies to Tom Petty, the waiting isn’t the hardest part – I think the hardest part of any endeavor is getting started.

For me, at least, having an idea is easy. I’ve got thousands of them, unformed and swirling around in my head. That’s one of the benefits of some thirty years of living with undiagnosed-but-manageable ADD – no shortage of inspiration. But there’s a downside to this fecundity – of those thousands ideas, only about ten percent bubble up to the surface to be expressed and, of that ten percent, maybe another ten percent get put into action in some way or another. I don’t even want to know what the “ideas that get seen through to the end” percentage looks like.

Sometimes I have to hold myself accountable to get started on the good ones, which is why I shared my plan to recreate my father’s cross-country ride. If I put it out there into the world, then I have to do it.

This idea is, I think, a worthwhile one – one that can and should be seen through to the end. But it’s going to take some work. I’m not leaving tomorrow – in fact, I’m not even sure I can leave this month or even next. There’s a lot to get done before I go – not the least of which will be getting used to riding my dad’s bike so I can ride it safely. When he decided to take this trip in 2008, he had a fair amount  of motorcycle experience – experience that had lay dormant for decades, to be sure, but he knew his stuff. Me? Well…outside of a weekend-long class and taking the California license test, I’m pretty green.

I’m not worried, though – this won’t be the first time that following in my dad’s footsteps has taken some effort to get started. I’m used to having a lot to live up to.