The Things We Do Before We're Ready

On becoming, beginning again, and trusting the cold water.

A few years ago, I found myself standing at the edge of a lake in winter. I wasn’t there for any profound reason. A friend had suggested it, and somehow that suggestion had snowballed into me staring at a body of water that looked entirely uninviting. The wind cut through my jacket. The shoreline was empty. Everything in me was saying the same thing: this is a terrible idea.

I remember looking at the water and thinking about how ridiculous it was that I was even considering it. Surely there was nothing to prove. Surely I could turn around, find a warm coffee shop, and spend the rest of the afternoon making better decisions. But after enough hesitation, enough bargaining with myself, I did what people often do when they’re standing at the edge of something uncertain.

I jumped.

The cold was immediate. There was no easing into it. No gradual adjustment. One second I was safely on shore, and the next I was fully immersed in something I had spent the last twenty minutes trying to avoid. And yet, almost as quickly as the shock arrived, so did another feeling. Aliveness. The kind that is difficult to explain and impossible to manufacture.

I’ve thought about that moment many times since then, not because it was particularly brave, but because it reminded me of how much of life is spent waiting. We wait until we’re more confident. More prepared. More certain. We convince ourselves that there will be a perfect moment to begin—that one day we’ll wake up and feel completely ready to take the leap we’ve been contemplating for months or years.

The problem is that life rarely works that way.

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In my experience, the most meaningful things happen long before we’re ready for them. Love arrives before we understand what it will ask of us. Opportunities appear before we feel qualified to accept them. New chapters begin while we’re still mourning the last one. Even the things we desperately want often arrive carrying an equal measure of uncertainty.

I’ve never met anyone who felt completely prepared to fall in love. I’ve never met anyone who felt entirely ready to start over. Most people I admire didn’t wait for certainty before they made a change. They simply reached a point where staying where they were became harder than moving forward.

Over the last few years, I’ve found myself returning to this idea again and again. I wrote about it in hotel rooms. On airplanes. In notebooks carried across cities and countries. I wrote about the courage it takes to leave. The courage it takes to stay. The courage it takes to trust yourself when there are no guarantees and no map.

What surprised me was how often these poems circled the same themes. Freedom. Love. Heartbreak. Wonder. Reinvention. Not as separate experiences, but as pieces of the same journey. Each one asking us to surrender certainty in exchange for growth.

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The older I get, the less I believe courage is something grand. Most days, courage looks ordinary. It looks like sending the message. Booking the ticket. Saying yes. Saying no. Beginning the first page when you aren’t sure you’ll finish the book. It looks like choosing movement over paralysis, even when fear is still sitting beside you.

Maybe that’s why I’ve always been drawn to dreamers and romantics. To the people willing to risk disappointment in pursuit of something beautiful. The people who understand that becoming isn’t a destination. It’s a lifelong process of shedding old versions of ourselves and stepping into new ones.

Eventually, I realized this wasn’t just an idea I was exploring. It was the thread connecting an entire collection of poems.

That realization became a book.

And that book became Skinny Dipping in December.

The title isn’t really about cold water. It’s about the moments that ask something of us before we feel prepared to give it. It’s about choosing wonder over certainty. About stepping into the unknown. About trusting that some experiences reveal their meaning only after we’ve already taken the leap.

This collection is for the restless hearts. For the people beginning again. For anyone standing at the edge of a new chapter, wondering whether they’re ready.

The truth is, you probably aren’t.

But then again, neither was anyone who ever did something worth remembering.

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Before you go, I’d like to leave you with this.

Think of a time you did something before you felt ready.

Maybe it was falling in love. Moving somewhere new. Starting over. Leaving something behind. Speaking up when it would have been easier to stay quiet.

What happened?

Would you make the same choice again?

Share your answer in the comments. I’d love to read it.

Love from the shadows,

Atticus

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Skinny Dipping in December is now available for pre-order.

we were never broken—
just learning
how to hold more light.