Have you ever felt a little lost in the beginning of the year, while everyone around you seemingly has their life together, making new year’s resolutions and setting their goals and intentions for the year?

Have you ever felt like “I’m just a mom trying to survive these early years with my littles. I don’t even have the capacity to think about accomplishing anything else.” I get you. I’ve been there. Just read my motherhood blogposts and you’ll quickly realize how much I truly understand.

It’s probably because we just moved to a new state 5 months ago and I still don’t feel fully settled, but I was not feeling gung-ho at all about 2024 and felt like I had no direction as to what I really wanted to accomplish this year.

• In 2020, I started sharing home projects on Instagram and found an incredible community of DIY moms.
• In 2021, I began partnering with companies professionally on IG, and at the same time found an IG account that forever altered the way I viewed motherhood. (You can read about that here.)
• In 2022, I took a step back from social media, realizing that I didn’t want to miss out on real life due to being busy with my virtual life.
• In 2023, I continued to slow down my social media presence, decluttered my entire house after being inspired by the book Messy Minimalism, and moved out of state.
• Now it’s 2024 and I had a big question mark looming over my head.

I took another break from social media to clear my head from outside influences (100% recommend doing this often), picked up the book Things That Matter by Joshua Becker, and the answer to that question mark over my head was on the third page:

“If you were to die today, what is the one project you would be most disappointed that you weren’t able to complete?”
JOSHUA BECKER

Boom. Immediately I knew my answer and it had nothing to do with any of the DIY projects I had planned for the new house. And as if he was in my brain verbalizing what I was thinking about, in the next paragraph he said:

“If I were to die today, I would be most disappointed that I never got a chance to write that book I’ve been thinking about for a long time now.”
JOSHUA BECKER

There I had it. The answer I was looking for but was too scared to commit to. Some of you may know that my aspiration in life is to be a children’s book author. I’ve been thinking about it for ten years. I have ideas written down, series and themes I want to get into, but thinking and dreaming is much less scary than actually trying and doing.

Chapter 3 of Things That Matter explained my years-long hesitation and I think many of us can relate:

Atychiphobia: The Fear of Failure

Becker lays out five signs of how fear of failure holds someone back and four out of the five signs resonated with me:

1. Procrastinating or routinely avoiding responsibility toward a goal. Yup.
2. Just accepting whatever happens to you instead of crafting your own future around your goals, dreams, and potential. Uh-huh.
3. Setting low expectations for yourself. Me to a T.
4. Doubting yourself even when everyone around you believes in you. 100% me.
5. Stress-induced ailments around new or challenging goals. Not me (yet) haha!

Coincidentally (or not-so-coincidentally since I don’t really believe in coincidences), I was scrolling IG the day before I started reading Things That Matter and saw a children’s book author I love, offering a masterclass on writing and publishing children’s literature. There were only a few spots left, and with a lot of hesitation but also my husband’s encouragement, I signed up! Ahhhhh!!

So it looks like 2024 is the year this aspiring children’s book author stops aspiring and starts trying. The fear of failure is so real, y’all. It may take one or five or ten years, but at least when I die, I will no longer be disappointed that I never tried to write the children’s book(s) I’ve been thinking about for so long.