Showing Up Before You Feel Ready: What Social Media Taught Me About Being a Beginner

I am terrible at social media.

There. I said it.

If I'm honest, this whole thing is really a lesson in showing up before you feel ready — because I certainly don't feel ready. If a friend called me tomorrow, tangled up in some business problem, I could probably hand her a plan before she finished her sentence. Do this first. Try that next. Stop pouring your energy over there and put it right here. When it's someone else's business, the path is so clear I can practically see it glowing.

When it's my own?

Apparently we're experiencing technical difficulties.

There's a block there, and I know exactly what it is. It's part of why I talk so much about the nervous system and the way our bodies can freeze up even when our minds know full well we're capable. I'm working on it. Learning through it. And when the time feels right, I'll tell you more of that story.

For years, I've used social media differently than most people do. I've always been there to learn. I follow the businesses that fascinate me. I read. I research. I save ideas in little folders I swear I'll revisit. I can vanish down a business rabbit hole with the best of them.

But actually posting?

Not so much.

Even in my own life, I've never been someone who documents everything. I posted when I got married. I posted when my beautiful girl was born. I posted when my beloved kitty passed away. Those moments lived so close to my heart that sharing them felt like breathing.

Otherwise, I mostly pop in and out. I'll wish someone a happy birthday when it crosses my screen. I'll cheer for a new baby, a wedding, a promotion, all the tender little milestones. If someone is grieving, I'll leave a note or send my love.

And I miss plenty. Probably enough that I occasionally look like a bit of a poo.

It isn't that I don't care. I've just never been good at keeping up with everyone's whole life through a little glowing rectangle.

But recently, I made a decision.

It was time to change that.

Showing Up Before You Feel Ready: Getting Serious About Social Media for Business

I've decided to get serious about social media for business — not because I suddenly want to narrate every second of my day, but because I believe in what I'm building with my whole heart.

If I want Karma Penguin to reach the people it's meant to reach, I have to be willing to learn how to hand it to them.

And that means doing something that does not come naturally to me one little bit.

So I enrolled in a wonderful business growth program with an incredible coach, and honestly, I feel so blessed to have been accepted. The program is still in beta, which somehow makes it feel even more special — I get to learn while something new is being built, tested, and shaped into the world.

We had our first coaching call yesterday.

And yes, coaches have coaches.

Why on earth wouldn't we? I've never understood the idea that knowing a lot about one thing means you should stop learning everything else. We're all works in progress. We all have blind spots. We all have corners of our own lives that someone standing just a few feet outside of them can see far more clearly than we can.

Sometimes the person who tells everyone else exactly what to do needs someone to turn around and gently say, "Wonderful. Now do it for yourself."

Enter Coach Matt.

He gave me homework. Three pieces of content, every single day. A video. An image. A text post.

When he said it, I thought, Okay. I can do this.

Then Day One arrived.

Friends, I am struggling. Not in some poetic, soft-focus way. I mean literally. I'm wrestling with programs. Uploading things. Moving things. Trying something, deleting it, trying again. Hunting for buttons that seem to have wandered off somewhere between the tutorial and my actual screen.

At one point I'm fairly sure technology and I were in a genuine argument.

Technology was winning.

But here's the part that matters.

I'm still doing it.

This Time, I Want to Learn It Myself

I could delegate this. That would honestly be so much easier. I could hand the whole thing to someone who knows exactly what they're doing and say, "Please, make this work."

I have wonderful people around me. I believe in teams. I believe in delegating. I believe one of the smartest things you can do in business is surround yourself with people who are better than you at the things they do.

But this time, at least in the beginning, I don't want someone else to do it for me.

I want to learn.

I want to understand what makes someone stop scrolling and actually listen. I want to know how to create a video like a movie director, not just approve one. I want to feel out what connects and what falls flat, and how to carry the heart of what I'm building all the way across to a real person on the other side of the screen.

Someday, much of this may be delegated. But first, I want my hands in it. I want to know what it feels like to be the beginner.

And being a beginner is humbling. Especially when you're used to being the one people come to for answers.

There's something strangely tender about going from "I know how to do this" to "Where is the button?"

Maybe that's good for us every once in a while.

There Is No Shame in Needing Someone to Teach You

One of the most beautiful things about learning is realizing that none of us ever really arrives.

There will always be something we don't know. Something we haven't mastered. Some new room where we walk through the door and suddenly become the least experienced person in it.

That doesn't erase what we already know. It just means we're still growing.

I can be good at business and still need help with social media. I can advise other people and still need someone to advise me. I can teach in one room and be the student in another.

Both can be true.

Maybe that's something we need to remind ourselves of more often. Asking for guidance doesn't shrink what you know. Sometimes it's proof that you care enough about where you're going to admit there's more to learn.

So thank you, Coach Matt. I'm here. I'm committed. I'm ready to learn, kick butt, get uncomfortable, make mistakes, get better, and do the work.

And I'm so grateful for the chance.

So Here Is My Accountability

If you've been reading Karma Penguin for any length of time, you know I don't do pretending.

I don't want to show you the polished ending someday and quietly leave out the part where I had absolutely no idea what I was doing.

This is that part. The beginning. The awkward part. The part where the vision is so much bigger than my current skill set.

And because accountability matters around here, I'm putting it in writing. I committed to showing up. So I'm going to show up.

If you happen to be following along while I learn, I have two small requests.

First, please be kind and gentle. Not just with me. With everyone. You never really know when you're watching someone try something for the very first time. You don't know how many times they nearly gave up before they hit publish. You don't know what feels easy to them and what took every scrap of courage they had that day. We should probably be gentler with one another anyway.

Second, you have my full permission to hold me accountable. Really. If I disappear, come looking for me.

Because I said I was going to do this. Three pieces of content a day. And apparently I've now announced it publicly on the internet, which feels like a wonderfully effective way to remove my escape route.

Maybe Your Beginning Is Supposed to Look Like a Beginning

There's one more thing I'm starting to understand.

We spend so much time admiring people after they've figured something out that we forget what the beginning ever looked like.

The first video probably wasn't great. The first business plan changed. The first presentation had mistakes. The first attempt took three times longer than it eventually would.

Someone we admire today once sat exactly where we're sitting, staring at something unfamiliar, quietly wondering if they'd ever get the hang of it.

Maybe beginnings aren't supposed to look polished.

Maybe they're supposed to look like beginnings. A little clumsy. A little uncomfortable. Full of questions. Full of possibility.

So if there's something you've been avoiding because you aren't naturally good at it, maybe this is your reminder too.

You don't have to already know how to do the thing you are only just beginning to learn.

You only have to be willing to begin.

Today, my beginning happens to involve social media, a patient coach, an absurd number of tutorials, and a few genuine moments of wondering why the button on my screen looks nothing like the button on everyone else's.

But I'm here. I'm learning. I'm showing up.

And somewhere underneath all the fumbling, I'm actually really excited to see where this goes.

Maybe one day I'll look back at these first awkward attempts and smile. Maybe that's one of the quiet gifts of letting ourselves be beginners.

We get to meet the version of ourselves who didn't know how yet — and one day realize just how far she came.

Waddle on, dear reader. Waddle on. ❤️

About the Author | Day 224

I'm a soul-led coach, writer, entrepreneur, mother, recovering perfectionist, and — as of this week — a social media student.

For 224 straight days, I've shown up here and written about life while I'm living it, not from the comfortable distance of having already figured everything out. That's meant writing through motherhood, healing, business lessons, grief, faith, exhaustion, big dreams, nervous system work, uncomfortable truths, ordinary moments, and more than a few situations where I would have much preferred to wait for a prettier ending.

Today is definitely one of those days.

I spend so much of my life helping other people see what they can't quite see for themselves. In business especially, I can usually step outside the noise, look at the pieces, and figure out where someone should go next.

Doing that for myself has always been a little more complicated.

There are reasons for that, and some run deeper than simply being "bad at social media." They're part of why I talk so much about the nervous system, why feeling safe matters, and why knowing in your mind that you can do something doesn't always mean every part of you is ready to leap.

I know what that block is. I'm working on it. And someday, when I'm ready, I'll probably write about that too.

But Day 224 isn't really about the block. It's about deciding not to let it make all my decisions for me.

I joined a business growth program with a coach I'm so grateful to learn from. I feel genuinely blessed to have made it into the beta, and after our first call, I walked away with an assignment that sounds simple until you're the person who has avoided posting consistently for years:

Three pieces of social media content every single day.

So now I'm learning. Not delegating the uncomfortable part. Not handing it off before I understand it. Not waiting until I feel completely confident and then pretending the confidence was there all along.

I'm doing it badly before I do it well.

And I think there's something important in that. We talk so much about becoming the person we want to be, but sometimes becoming her looks remarkably unglamorous. Sometimes she's staring at a screen, hunting for a button. Sometimes she's watched the tutorial three times. Sometimes she knows exactly what she'd tell someone else to do and still has to coax herself into doing it.

And sometimes she finally presses publish anyway.

So thank you, Coach Matt. I'm here. I'm committed to learning, kicking butt, getting uncomfortable, and doing the work.

And if you happen to catch me fumbling through the beginning, you have my permission to hold me accountable.

Just be gentle.

I'm learning.

And maybe that's exactly where I'm supposed to be.