Fear Sucks
I stumbled upon a blog I actually forgot I ever created. It’s a little sad that I forgot about it, since it is actually only a couple years old.
I read through all of the posts (there weren’t a ton), and it was interesting to read back on what I was writing about back then. There was one that stood out to me most, entitled “Fear Sucks”. I couldn’t help but want to have it live on in the blog I’m wiritng now.
So, without any editing from back then or anything, this is it:
Fear is a part of every life. I can’t speak for how anyone but myself has lived, but for me fear has been a very invasive and ever present force around me. It has taken many forms, some of which I have discovered are probably social anxiety. On it’s own, fear isn’t necessarily the worst thing in the world, but there have been times which it has paralyzed me. When fear reaches a point that it stops me from doing things I should be doing, then it becomes a real problem.
I have more regrets in life than I’d like to admit. And, for the most part, these come down more to things I didn’t do than things I did. So many times in my life I let fear stop me from doing something that could have been great. There have been jobs I didn’t apply to, not because I didn’t think I would get the job, but because I was afraid I wouldn’t be good enough if I did get it. There have been people, both in general social situations or with more romantic intention, that I have refused to talk to because I have been too afraid of what could come of it. Even times I said no to going out at all because I would only know a single person at the event, and feared I would be too much of a burden on them.
There have been many projects that have been put on hold, or cancelled entirely due to fear. I talked for years about wanting to move to LA in order to become a television writer. And though other factors come into play (a big one being money), there is a level to which fear of failure has stopped me from working as hard as I should toward that goal. This is just one example. There have been countless things I stopped too early before I could have a chance to fail.
I have a distinct memory from when I was young of wanting to make comics. I drew these little creatures, and started coming up with story that would make sense for them. This was in grade 8. I have to imagine it was the very first original concept I ever worked toward. One day at school, I choose to show a friend. Soon after that, I left the room. I don’t remember why, something along the lines of using the washroom I would assume. When I came back, the page with all of my characters on it was folded in weird angles again and again before finally having being stapled about a dozen times. I’ll be honest here, I flew into a bit of a rage. I flipped out on my friend, assuming it must have been he who had done it. It wasn’t. It was another person in the class who saw the page and thought this would be a hilarious prank. It wasn’t for another five-ish years that I ever worked on anything original again. Longer before I ever drew again. Probably eight or so years after when I next showed anybody something I wrote.
Fear stopped my work entirely. One bad prank, and I quit. I took the whole incident to mean my work must have been stupid. Looking back, there was a lot of problems with this thinking. But when you’re young, every little thing hits so much harder than it should.
This being said, I did eventually get over a lot of that. Fear of showing people my work still exists, but it doesn’t stop me in the same way. I have sent people who are basically strangers my work just because they asked. Writing fiction is something I have become so confident in that I don’t mind anyone seeing it. I still feel the same fear, that’s something I don’t think will ever go away, but I can control it now. I’ve talked to so many people about my work that I know that I can take any bad that may come. And recently (November 2017 to be exact), I started an Instagram account mainly to show the things I draw. My sketches are something I’m not amazing at. I don’t like many of the things I draw. But I’ve come to terms with it enough that I can show people again.
For a much more major example of working passed fear, there was the switch from high school to university. For everyone this can be a stressful time, but on top of all the usual issues was the fact that I left my home to move to a new province all on my own. This is something I wanted to do since early high school, if not sooner. But eventually, I think in early grade 12, it started to feel real. The more real it started to feel, the more it scared me. There were many nights spent awake thinking I should stay where I was. I would find something to do in Thunder Bay and not ever leave. But in the end, I made the right choice for me. I did leave. And it wasn’t just scary, but also really hard. I was almost entirely on my own. I had my own apartment, I had no friends in the city, just a few people from my extended family who happen to lived there and I could contact if I ever really needed something. It was a very lonely time for me, and sometimes I felt like maybe I wasn’t up to it. But, in the end, nearly a decade later, I feel very safe in saying that it was one of the best choices of my life. Coming here opened me up to so many new things. It made me feel so much more free to discover who I was.
If things always turned out well, fear wouldn’t be much of an issue. But, unfortunately, that isn’t the case. There have been times I’ve gotten over my own issues only to have had it go badly. There have been women I have asked for their number only to have the number they gave be a lie. There have been times I have tried to open up to friends about problems I have had, only to discover we weren’t as close as I thought. The worst of which was a time where I was feeling very down and tried to talk to someone who called me their best friend. Their response was getting upset with me because they were apparently having a good day for once and hearing about my problems ruined it.
These things are tough to deal with. They are the reason fear continues to have any power at all, and each time something like this happens it makes it so difficult to try again.
I think over the years I have been getting better. Especially in these past few months I have been trying to push myself to do some of the things that scared me. Even this blog is one of those things. Sure, I haven’t been doing much with it yet, but I do hope to someday. I’m still kind of figuring out what to do with it.
The point of all this? Fear paralyzes, but using that as an excuse closes a lot of doors. Like I said, a lot of my regrets in life come from not doing something. I feel like I would be much more accomplished if I learned sooner how to get passed these feelings. There are some things I’ve put off because of fear that I can still do, but there are even more things that it is far too late for.
Personally, I’m looking at 2018 as a year of building. I began building toward this back in November. I have a lot I want to do, and this is the year I am taking the first steps into making some of those things happen. I have held myself back for too long. It’s the time I push my fears aside and do something.
Will any of it work out? I don’t have a clue. But I’ve reached a point where I can’t let the fear of failure hold me back. Succeed or fail, I want more out of life than what living within the shallow area where I feel secure. It’s time to dive into the deep end. Or, at least, wade into the middle. Small steps matter.
I want to build. I want to create. I want a future that is bound only by my dreams and not by my fears.
Hopefully if anyone happens to read this they can take something out of it. Though they are my personal feelings, I’m sure many have faced at least similar experiences. And it’s hard. There is no switch to flip to make it go away. But with work, I think it is possible to push yourself passed it. At least, that’s what I’m trying to do.
I do have one silly correction to make about this, it was in October, not November that I created that Instagram account. It was specifically for Inktober, which is why I was using it to show my drawings. I am very surprised I didn’t get that right back then, when I was much closer to it.
I have written multiple times about how 2018 was “the year of building” for me. This is actually how it began. This was originally posted January 22, 2018. This is the headspace that got me there. This is the thing that eventually led to so much of what I am doing now.
It’s been less than two years, but this was a moment that marked a change in my life’s direction. I’ll leave it with the same point I did back then:
“Hopefully if anyone happens to read this they can take something out of it. “