My Fear Of Failure

I'm an idiot. I just had this sudden realization around an hour and a half back. Today I've had this big uneasy feeling. Last night (or rather very early this morning) I went to sleep uneasy. I woke up uneasy. I spent the day uneasy.

I went for a run after I woke up today morning (something I NEVER do), because I felt I needed it. I thought maybe it would clear my mind. I woke up one hour before my alarm clock, despite clocking in less than six hours of sleep.

I couldn't put my finger on what was up with me the whole day until that light bulb moment. I know I've been avoiding writing for the past few days. Always making excuses. My resolution to write everyday if only for ten minutes hasn't lasted more than a few days. I've been ignoring it. Pretending it doesn't exist because I told myself I have more pressing matters at hand. Then I stopped and asked myself: what the hell am I doing?

Then, more questions. What is my passion? The written word - writing and reading! But why am I doing everything I can to avoid those two things? Am I lying to myself? Maybe my true passion is something else. Then, I thought: no. These two things have always brought me joy. What changed then?

My perspective, I think. Before last year, I never thought of these two things as anything less than an active hobby and they were nothing but pure pleasure. Writing was something that I was doing for myself. From the minute I started to consider writing as a possible career, it increasingly became a chore. Why?

Because there was this new pressure to succeed (pressure that wasn't there before - pressure I put on myself, I have to add). However, the pressure kept rising and rising. It rose so much in fact that writing became so stressful at one point last year that I had to stop for more than two months before I gathered myself again.

I think this whole situation originates from this: my fear of failure. As difficult as it is to admit to myself, I'm afraid to fail at writing, so I constantly delay writing and even when I do write, I feel that it's not good enough. But by losing so much time being scared, I'm losing the opportunity to follow my dreams and my heart. The thing is, I realize I'm the only person holding myself back. And by doing so, I'm whittling my life away little by little. I'm sabotaging myself, like someone I know likes to say.

I watched a great movie today. It basically had this one line that I find so liberating: "Don't run after success. Run after excellence. Then, success will come running after you on its own."

So, I've decided I'm going to be afraid no more. Even if I fail at writing, at least I will still have the satisfaction of knowing that I gave it my everything. And I'm determined to make writing stories fun again. Even if no one wants to read them.

And as Robin Sharma says in this blog post, the antidote to fear is action. I'm going to post my next short story. It's not perfect. It's not even pretty (and I'm pretty sure it's badly written). But it is what it is. And by posting this short story, I will be battling my fear actively.

The Burden Of Expectations

So, I've been listening to Disparate Youth by Santigold on and off for quite some time now.

And obsessing over a few lyrics. The ones that go like:
“Another roadblock in our way.”
“They wanna sit and watch you wither.”
“A life worth fighting for.”

Note: What I’m about to say is just my personal opinion. And probably unwanted advice of sorts. Take it or leave it.

The thing is that song has brought back something I realized fully in a single moment of clarity a few years ago and it’s something I've been wanting to get off my chest for quite some time now.

It’s about expectations and the burden that comes with them. People (your parents, your acquaintances and society in general) expect you to make something out of your life, from the day you are born. Even if no one tells you about it straightaway, it’s there – you can feel it and you can see it in the eyes of the people around you. Unless you are a child prodigy or a pop star who makes it big in your teens or simply have incredibly open-minded parents, the commonly approved standard for meeting those expectations or alternately “success” generally involves studying hard enough, getting decent grades, going to college, graduating and finally getting a job. Not any job at that, a “real” job that pays the bills and gets you a decent place to live in.

But what if you don’t want to get a “real” job? What if your dream is to make something else out of your life? To become someone else who’s not a robot doing that miserable cubicle job? What if you don’t want to go down the beaten path but make up your own? And oh horrors of horrors, what happens if you don’t conform to the expectations that others have of you?

So, my question is: Do expectations really matter?