do it scared anyway

There is never a perfect time for anything to happen, things just happen. In my experience, timing is an endlessly funny way to make yourself feel inferior to people around you. There have been years of my life wasted waiting for the perfect time to do something that I’ve always wanted to do – the reality is that time is an unfeeling truth that doesn’t care about the whims of humankind. That waiting was always born out of fear. Fear of rejection, of never finding an audience, of becoming nothing to anyone. It’s immobilizing.

For the most part, I am still scared. It sits in my mind like a song I have stuck in my head. The feeling that I am doing everything wrong weighs heavy on my chest every day. Who am I to give into my most base and shitty feelings? Why should I constantly listen to the negative voices in my head? Why is fear the overwhelming emotion? Who allowed that and also can I kick their ass?

The inherent problem is that the fear lives fully inside my own head and nowhere else. It is important to note that killing the things that live in your head is deeply intimate and important work that forces the self to shed skin that we have gotten very comfortable in. Shedding is painful, and necessary. It is not to be taken lightly.

Giving into that immobilizing fear feels as though it’s the copout that most people give into when they realize that getting what you want is not easy. Ease does nothing for you, and I’ve always believed that. Not that constant, inescapable trauma or strife is a better way to live, but how are you supposed to learn fire is hot if you don’t put your hand near it? I think too many people seek the ease of existence that is romanticized in social media.

The “realities” that we are shown are known lies created to sell something for the most part, but people want so badly to not do anything real with their own lives that they pine for an existence that doesn’t exist. Seeking ease is giving into fear – if your heart doesn’t pound from adrenaline and excitement every once in a while, how do you gauge your own reality? I’ve always found that my intuition is the only guide I should listen to and she has always loudly told me to do the thing that I am terrified of. If I have to wander the halls of the universe muttering “fear is the mind killer” to myself then I absolutely will.

There is an overused metaphor about a window of opportunity that I believe in to an extent, but windows are only views. I feel as though I can get a decent view on what I want whenever I close my eyes. What I want is a door. I need to be able to open it, walk through it, and go forth into whatever has been waiting for me to wake up and get moving. 

Scared is something I thought I would be able to handle better the older I got. It never gets any easier, you just do it way more often than you do most anything else.