I’m currently sitting in bed at 11:11 (make a wish!) AM on a Thursday, surrounded by my iPhone, my headphones, a homemade oat milk latte, some Hershey Valentine’s Hugs, and a half dozen Zoom interview transcripts that I need to turn into a coherent script by EOD on Friday for a Target video. 

Right before midnight last night, I launched what will most likely become the scariest project of my life:

@amberl.carter

And I feel really good about it (and proud of myself for smashing all of my perfectionist/procrastination tendencies), but I’m also exhausted. 

I woke up feeling not great, and it came with the kind of a fatigue where you get a tiny burst of productive energy and then you literally need to lie down for another hour. Which is why I’m in bed, with my laptop…I know that resting and giving your body and mind a break is so important, but I promised myself that I would get certain things done today, and I don’t want to let myself down. 

There’s a lot of road to cover between my last update during Week 3 and today, the 65th day of the project. Probably the biggest thing that’s come out of it is that I managed to develop a working process, or a roadmap if you will, for how I want to proceed with this project. It’s an ever-evolving thing - I cannot tell you how many times over the course of the last 65 days that I’ve come up with an idea of something I think I should integrate, only to try it and be all, “Uh, NOPE.” My ultimate goal is to create a blueprint that I know, from my own experience, is not only incredibly effective but also easily replicable for anyone who is hoping to level up their own self-worth. 

I mean, I do love doing things only for me, but every once in a while it’s just cool to think about other people, y’know? 

Here’s the Big Worth Energy Process:

In the next few weeks, I’ll be going through each step and sharing some of things I’ve experienced + learned since starting this project. 

But to bring you up to speed on this week…it’s been wild stuff. The thing is, I feel like I’ve been waiting for years now for things to start happening, for stuff to shift…for something new and exciting to pop up in my life. 

Now I’ve realized that in order for that to happen, I had to shift first. Doing this project was the first step…as I was telling the Secret Sharing Circle last night in my Daily Update, I can’t even imagine what my life would be like now if I hadn’t launched BWE when I did. I would probably still be waiting to launch it, convincing myself to create more and more strategy around it before I even thought about debuting it. 

So I’ve been applying that more and more to my life…taking big risks and starting before I’m ready. Launching @amberl.carter last night? Part of that. Sending this Weekly Update today? Part of that as well. 

My instinct is to always sit on things until I’m convinced they’re perfect and flawless and ready, but the thing is, no matter how long I wait to launch them, they are neverperfect and flawless and ready. I used to negate the perfectionist label for decades because I am not an attention-to-detail person and nothing I put out is ever all that perfect…yet now I know that it actually does 100% apply to me, because it’s really about being too afraid to take risks because you’re so scared that if they’re flawed, then that obviously means that *you’re* flawed, too, which will surely only result in more of the pain and shame you’ve already experienced. 

So! I’m not doing that anymore. And the shift? It’s been working: Last night, before I finally fell asleep, I told myself that I really needed to start journaling again so I could keep track of everything that had happened in my life this week, because it is BIG stuff.

Speaking of sleep…I am fully and completely spent, so like the Bloodhound Gang in No Hard Feelings, I’m gonna wrap this up. 

If you’re like, “No, Amber, I want MORE! Tell me MORE! More intimate details! More private life exposes! GIVE IT ALL TO ME!”, then I invite you to sign up for the Secret Sharing Circle, which receives Daily Updates and access to the BWE Close Friends IG. And I’ll be straight with you - those Secret Sharing Circle peeps now know more about me than almost anyone else in the world. 

Subscribe now

That’s right. Like Degrassi: The Next Generation, I go there.

I DO swear a lot more than Paige, though. Just so’s ya know. 

Until next week!

-AC