Stop Waiting for Permission

Just do the thing.

Photo by me.

For those of us who are a bit older (I’m fifty-two), it’s become painfully clear that so many of us have spent far too much of our lives waiting for permission.

Waiting till all our homework and chores are done before we can go out and play.

Waiting till we have a good job and some savings set aside before we travel the world.

Waiting to get an agent, so we can wait while the agent finds us a publisher, so we can wait while the publisher spends two years getting our book out (or folds before they get to it).

Waiting for him to propose.

Waiting for permission.

I attended a small elementary school in a tiny rural town. I was already a weirdo: the only hippie kid from over the hill, lost among the children of farmers who’d all known each other since birth. The first two grades shared a classroom, which had a single bookcase with two shelves. The bottom shelf was first-grade books, and the upper was for second-graders.

Well. I was a reader. Our commune over the hill had no electricity, therefore no TV; reading was my greatest joy. I read all the time — at home by kerosene lantern, on the playground at recess while the other kids ran around, on my hour-long bus ride. I read all the first-grade books in…