My greatest fear is keeping me from some of my goals, but I'm not exactly sure what my greatest fear is. I don’t think most of us really know the details on what is keeping us from being what we could be. I do know that as I look towards trying to get a literary agent I am getting so incredibly day-dreamy that it’s hard to focus! My creative mind goes into overdrive any time I’m doing something that has the ring of do or die to it. Every time I turned in a research paper, I had to fight to focus on working through the last days of it. So, what am I afraid of? Failure? Yes, to some degree. But, I already know what that feels like; it’s hardly the undiscovered country! I once failed so hard that cried for like 3 weeks and had a small identity crisis. I went on to slay that demon, but there are scars left that have helped me define who am today–part warrior!
Do I fear success? Yes, that too. The problem with success is that as soon as you look out over the mountains you just conquered, you realize you’re actually at the base of another mountain. You might sit down, sort of resting on your laurels style, but that gets boring really fast! So, your bored now and you start to wonder what’s at the top of THAT mountain…maybe a place to take a nap!!! Deep down, you know that the next peak will be AWSOME, but it will take you to the base of yet another mountain. You don’t have to climb. At some point, we all sit down. Throughout our lives the mountains we climb become very different; what used to be a Thursday afternoon in our 30’s can become cliff to be scaled in our 70’s. Right now, my mountain is the challenge of putting my work out there to strangers and knowing that most of them will reject it. Even more terrifying is the one that says, I think we can really do something with this! That’s really why I’m being pulled so hard by a daydream. I am terrified of the acceptance letter, the opening to even more strangers that might look at me and laugh. For this introvert, it’s a tall mountain. Time to get out the climbing equipment again and get my ass in gear!!!