Baby Steps
Are pretty big actually!
Today I’m thinking about the baby steps we take before reaching different endpoints and how we tend to describe these steps as small and meager and unremarkable but how they’re actually large and powerful and un-ignorable in the context of basically everything.
I’ll write about this literally to start and then I’ll tell you about some of the tiny steps I’ve taken slash am taking myself.
First up: literal baby steps.
I’m talking about a literal baby taking literal baby steps. Can you picture that? Cute, right? For added context the (literal) baby we’re looking at isn’t taking any number of (literal) baby steps but just so happens to be taking its first (literal baby) steps ever. Impressive right!? (Queue applause.)
Literal baby steps are impressive, actually, because until they happen, the literal baby doesn’t know how to walk at all. It may crawl or roll or lie or cry but it won’t put one foot in front of the other to start teeter tottering down the hall.
But because (one) I don’t know if you agree with me and (two) I want to make a point in this newsletter, let’s take a (big adult) step back and consider how we might act if we didn’t find this poor little baby’s steps to be impressive. What if instead of applauding its efforts we looked this baby up and down and said, “Yikes! You didn’t even make it to the door!” or, “Oof. Short stride, little dude,”?
Personally, I don’t think any of us (myself and loyal readership included, xoxo) are mean enough to scoff at a baby for taking too-short steps, but I do think we tend to act this way toward ourselves. I do! Too often, I disregard the preliminary steps I take toward a goal because they seem so so so small — and they are — and they feel like they couldn’t possibly matter — but they do.
Walk with me for a sec and think about the (literal) steps we take now as adults. I’m fortunate enough to have a healthy body and two functioning legs — which, I admit, is a privilege — and at this point in my life, walking around feels pretty easy. But if little baby me (aw) had never taken its first tiny steps way back when (the 90s), I can only imagine I would fare differently today.
Next up: my own tiny steps
I’m constantly taking literal tiny steps because I love to bop around. Find me a park, beach, museum, flea market, farmer’s market, open house, antique shop, library, street-I-haven’t-noticed-before — I’m there and I’m walking! But I’m constantly taking metaphorical tiny steps too — in my career and social life and future planning and mental health and physical health and relationship building and what have you — even though I have a harder time acknowledging and giving myself credit for these ones.
I’ll do myself a favor and highlight one today, though, which was the step of starting this newsletter.
This was a big baby step for me, fueled by a nagging I never creative write anymore type of self pity along with the external encouragement of writers like Paola de Varona and L’Oreal Thompson Payton (both of whom you should follow on Substack!) who told me to just do it baby girl (paraphrased) if I had something to say.
I want to highlight L’Oreal’s encouragement particularly because it represents not one small step but a movement forward. To fill you in, I met L’Oreal this summer when I blindly signed up for a course she led on how to write a nonfiction book proposal — which they don’t teach you in journalism school! — and I loved it. I love taking courses in general because it’s fun to absorb new info and doodle on a spiral notebook, but this one was special because the topic intrigued me and because L’Oreal was so nice! We met again today, virtually, which I think extra-drives home the point of how little steps really can have a bigger impact, and help move us along.
Well, I have countless more steps to take in countless more areas of my life. But I think too much about those as is, and maybe you do too. That’s why I wanted *hold space* for some of the steps we’ve already taken. They matter! You matter! Love you. Xoxo.
And before you go, here’s a sketch I drew of those little baby shoes that most of us who identified as girls in our infant through toddler era always wore.
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