Time to Take out the (Head) Trash

My Kickstarter project this year almost never launched.

And it wasn't anyone's fault but my own. 

Did the start of your year feel like an older car in frigid temperatures, slowly, slowly warming up? 

Mine sure did! 

For the most part I'm ok with that- it's a much better feeling than the "January 1 vibes" that I used to roll with (and then get super stressed out and beat myself up because whatever overambitious goals I set before Jan. 1 were already "behind").

But this year started out differently.

TBH, I almost didn't launch this project, as I had a lot of head trash about my work, myself, and my visibility.

What is head trash?

It's those negative thoughts that pop into your head that you're not good enough, or that you'll never succeed, etc. H/T to Charlie Gilkey of Productive Flourishing for introducing me to this concept.

"But Holly," you might be saying, "Didn't you have a successfully funded Kickstarter campaign last year? And that was your first campaign ever? And also, it was a project you FINISHED?"

Well, yes.

But if you identify yourself as a creative person (and we are ALL creative, in our own way), you'll know that that Head Trash can pop up out of nowhere; like a much crankier Oscar the Grouch.

And sometimes it takes you some time to take out the trash!

How to take out the (head) trash

 I have to thank my accountability squad for supporting me as I was waffling about whether to launch the project or not.

They had my back regardless of which way I went.

And sometimes that's all you need. 

Sometimes taking out the (head) trash is easy like that- talking it over with your support squad, doing some journaling, or reviewing past successes can banish that trash!

Other times, it's a little more tricky. When you're knee-deep in some tricky head trash, that's the gunk that can take longer to clear out and can benefit from having expert help (your hype squad, your support network, your therapist, your dog).

What got me over the finish line was the fact that I had nearly everything ready- and I probably could have just launched the dang thing at that point. 

Future Me would be more pissed at the time I had already spent on this just to not launch...so I had to do some digging to find where my resistance was; what was stopping me?

I didn't have a video ready.

Yes, I could have just launched the project without it, but when Kickstarter adds text near the video area in the launch page saying "80% of successful projects have a video..." 

OK, FINE!

So I did it. I had already taken some footage, but just needed to film a few more bits, write the whole script, and put all the pieces together. 

And once I had done that, there was a smaller speed bump of setting up the captions, but once the video was up and ready...

I launched the project. 

Now to banish the Head Trash Pandas when it comes to actually telling folks about my project...