I’ve started the editing process of the first draft of my book detailing my experience of walking the Te Araroa Trail down the length of New Zealand.

I had been dreading it.

How bad was my writing going to be? How much would I have to rewrite? How long was it going to take? Was I really cut out for this?

Then I was sort of excited about getting to polish the turd. Seeing how my writing had progressed, reliving the story through older eyes.

After a month of reading through my first draft (which is taking a bit longer than I expected), I’m pleasantly surprised with the experience.

It’s a long way off being a best seller but reading it with fresh eyes isn’t quite as horrendous, cringe-worthy or soul-destroying I originally thought it would be.

We can easily assume things will be X, W or Z and we make up stories about what we think it will be like (such as worrying about worst-case scenarios).

But rarely do these turn out to be true.

My story is about a girl who dared to believe she was more than she thought.

My hiking journey was not what I assumed or expected. There was no straight line. I couldn’t predict how it actually turned out.

And now with the book writing and editing, it’s the same.

What I expect the process to be will be nothing like what it will be in real life. And what I assume the outcome or end result once all the editing is done and the book is finished will be nothing like how I imagine it right now.

When we open our mind, assumptions become a tiny puddle among a sea of infinite possibilities.

It’s not black and white. Heck it’s not even 50 shades of grey.

It’s the seven colours of the rainbow and all the hundreds in between.

Dare to believe that life is more than you think.

Because it really, truly is.

#ownyourawesome