The year I spent getting ready to start

I spent almost a year preparing. Reading, planning, sketching, learning. I told myself I was building the foundation for what would come next.

The thing I was actually doing was avoiding the start. Every week of preparation was a week I did not have to fail at something real. And preparation looks exactly like work from the outside, so nobody questioned it, and I did not have to either.

The moment I actually started, all the preparation mattered far less than I expected. Most of what I needed I learned in the first two weeks of doing, and most of what I had studied was not relevant.

I am not against preparation. I am against the version of it that becomes a comfortable place to live, where you get to feel productive without ever risking anything.

Do you ever catch yourself preparing instead of starting? And what is the thing you have been getting ready to do for a long time?