There’s a certain breed of advice that floats around creative and productivity spaces like gospel, clean and simple and wildly unattainable: “Just start.” As if the act of beginning were as easy as lifting a finger. As if the only thing standing between you and progress was a stubborn refusal to move. And maybe, for some people, it really is that easy. Maybe there are brains that can accept that command without spiraling, without negotiating every step like it’s a hostage situation. I respect those people. I admire them from a cautious distance. But I am not one of them, and I never have been.
For me, living with OCD means that starting isn’t a matter of motivation. It’s not about laziness or distraction. It’s about fear—deep, molecular fear that wraps itself around every beginning and demands impossible assurances before allowing a single step forward. It’s about the rituals that have to be observed, the invisible checklists that must be satisfied, the desperate need for conditions to feel “right” before permission is granted to move. It’s not enough to want to start. I have to prove to myself that starting won’t lead to disaster, to failure, to some irreversible mistake that my brain has decided will be catastrophic.
The process is exhausting before it even begins. I don’t just open the laptop and write. I check. I recheck. I clean. I rearrange. I adjust lighting and reformat outlines and rewrite task lists until they are tidy enough to make me believe, however briefly, that I have control. I build elaborate rituals to soothe the dread that starting will somehow set off a chain reaction I won’t be able to stop. I know it’s irrational. I know the ritual itself won’t protect me. But knowing doesn’t unmake the fear. It only sharpens the edges of how much of my own mind I’m constantly trying to navigate around.
It doesn’t help that the world worships efficiency. That “just start” isn’t just advice—it’s a standard. A quiet, smug expectation that if you’re not able to snap into action, you’re the problem. You’re undisciplined. You’re making excuses. When really, what you’re doing is fighting a battle no one else can see, using weapons you’ve had to forge yourself just to keep standing. There’s no medal for getting through it. No congratulations for the effort it takes to sit down, to open the file, to lay a shaky hand on the keyboard and not immediately pull it back. But it’s work. God, it’s work.
Eventually, I do start. Not gracefully, not easily. Not with that clean cinematic moment of inspiration so many people seem to expect. I start tired. I start frayed. I start after hours of circling, second-guessing, rehearsing and restarting the process in my head a dozen times before a single tangible thing exists on the page. And when I do, it’s a small act of rebellion against the part of me that demands perfection or paralysis. It’s not about productivity anymore. It’s about survival. About proving, again and again, that imperfect beginnings are still beginnings.
I have had to make peace with the fact that my starts will always be messy. That my work will always carry the fingerprints of the rituals and reroutes that got me there. I will never be the kind of person who slides into a project on pure momentum and good vibes. I will always trip over my own wiring on the way in. But I still arrive. Eventually. And every messy, stuttering beginning counts more than anyone else will ever know.
And that’s enough.
