At some point, you have to let people in

The thing about building is that you're still largely in control. You can move things around, change your mind, fix things and keep working away until you're happy with them. But eventually you reach a point where you have to stop tinkering and let people in. I think that's where I am now.

Over the past few weeks I've started inviting more people to use what I've built. I'm beginning to put it out there properly and say, this is here now, come and have a look. It's exciting, but I also find it quite exposing. Once other people come in, it's no longer just mine to play around with. They'll use it in ways I hadn't thought about, they'll find things that don't work, they may not understand parts of it, and they may tell me things I hadn't considered at all.

The timing of all this has made me smile because, just as I'm trying to open the doors to something I've spent months carefully putting together, the relative calm of the summer holidays has disappeared at home. September has arrived, and with it comes the usual family chaos. School starts again, there are new classes, new teachers, new routines and different expectations. Everyone in our house seems to be going through their own little change at the same time.

The rhythm we had over the summer suddenly doesn't work anymore. Alarms are going off again, bags need packing, things get forgotten, plans change and everyone seems to be adjusting in their own way. And somewhere amongst all of that, I'm adjusting too.

I've started to realise that building Your Life, Your Call gave me somewhere quite safe to be. There was always a perfectly reasonable reason why I wasn't quite ready to put it properly in front of people. I just needed to finish this bit, that page needed changing, or there was something else I wanted to add. Most of the time those things were genuinely true, but I wonder if, occasionally, they were quite convenient too.

Because once you let people in, you give up a little bit of control. You can't decide what they'll think of it, whether they'll understand what you were trying to create or whether they'll come back. And I'm beginning to realise that this isn't something that happens after you've finished building. It's actually part of building.

Maybe that's why September feels quite appropriate. For lots of us, this time of year brings some kind of new beginning. It might be children going back to school, a new class or teacher, returning to work after the summer, or simply getting used to a different rhythm again. We can prepare for these changes as much as we like, but life rarely waits until everyone feels completely ready.

That's certainly what it feels like in our house at the moment. We're all stepping into something slightly different, all at the same time, and probably all dealing with it in our own way. My change might look completely different from the changes the rest of the family are experiencing, but underneath it there is something quite similar. We're all leaving something familiar and moving into something that isn't quite familiar yet.

Perhaps that's what I've been thinking about most this week. We spend a lot of time trying to get ourselves ready for whatever comes next. We prepare, plan and try to get everything in order before we begin, but sometimes the next bit just begins anyway. September arrives, the alarm goes off, the front door opens and off we go.

Maybe being ready doesn't always mean having everything sorted. Sometimes it might simply mean being willing to let the next bit begin.

Stefan