Welcome to Prologs. My name is Mary, and when I get overwhelmed and start feeling behind, I find it helpful to zoom out and remind myself that I am still in the beginning of my story. I'm sharing all of my life's chapters, mental health, relationships, wellness, beauty, the chaos of being in my 20s, and all of life's unexpected turns. Prologs is the best way to start

your week, so join me every Monday morning for a new entry into my digital journal.

Hello, everyone. Welcome back. I got a notification on my phone this week from the Spotify

for Podcasters app, and it said, happy one year anniversary on the podcast. And I released the first episode of prologs on

May 1st last year. So I'm not sure how they're calculating that. Maybe I scheduled it a week

early and I just published it on May 1st. I don't know. But it reminded me that the one year is coming

up. I published the first episode on May 1st, 2023. And I've been reflecting on that a lot. It doesn't feel like a year.

I feel like in some ways this podcast is still brand new. And it's been a bit of a rude wake-up call for me,

actually, because given that the podcast is officially a year old, I keep having these feelings

that I should just be better at it because I feel like I'm

still navigating my way through the space and still learning how to have a podcast and how to

produce a podcast. And I didn't actually love the one year anniversary reminder because I was like,

damn, it's been a year. I feel like I should be better at it that I am right now.

But I'm also trying to reframe that in my head and look at it in a more positive way and just say,

wow, it's been a year. I'm really proud of myself because I wanted to start the podcast for

eight months before I did it. And when I started it, I had a lot of fear that it would just do horribly or that it wouldn't resonate with anyone or that

no one would care or that I wouldn't be able to stick to it. And I am proud of myself for just starting

it anyway and going along with it. I feel like something I've spoken about a lot is this idea of being

bad at your hobbies or starting things knowing you won't be great at it,

but just starting anyway. I, as most of you, also struggle with that paralysis of not wanting to

start things if you can't be perfect at it straight away. It's really hard to get over that.

And so I'm balancing, I'm flip-flopping between those two things in my mind right now.

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