Go Epic or...

I have this strange, unaccountable fear of failure.

Wow, that's a friend-making way to start a conversation.

But really, cutting right to the heart of the matter, that's my fear. I think that is everything in my life in a succinct little nutshell.

While I can't say that failure characterizes my life in any particular way, the fear of it, the dread of it, especially of it being known, terrifies me. It's a strange thing because (commence therapy session) honestly, I don't think badly of others who fail, it's just that I hold myself to this ridiculous standard. "You're your own worst critic," I've heard a million times, and that's true, but that's not it. That's not the problem. The critic of what? What I have been too afraid to actually do? No, I don't criticize myself enough. If I kicked my own butt and called myself a fool more often, maybe I'd actually accomplish something. That's the only way that last one got written, believe me.

So, what of the colloquial "Go epic or go home"? I sit there shivering in the cold thinking, "What if I'm not epic? What if they send me home?" and I change the whole thing to "Go epic or don't go," and I don't go.

So what if I fill my head with the colloquialisms and let them rule me. They are said often because they are proven right, after all.

"The only real failure in life is the failure to try."

"The greatest barrier to success is the fear of failure."

"There are no failures, just experiences and your reactions to them."

"There are no secrets to success; it is preparation, hard work, and learning from failure."

"Life's real failure is when you don't realize how close you were to success when you gave up."

"I didn't fail the test I just found 100 ways to do it wrong."

"Failure is a detour, not a dead-end street."



...You get the idea.

I think that those of us who are afraid of failure have to get over ourselves. No one cares that much about our failures, and success means too much to let it get away. 

Bleeding Dreams

I have spent the past 4 years of my life teaching freshman composition, and doing almost entirely that and nothing else! It has been rewarding, interesting, frustrating, and exhausting, sometimes by turns and sometimes all at once. Now is a decision point for me. As I am making the final touches to the master's thesis I wrote with my own blood (that could easily be turned to a literal statement...often it feels that excruciating!) I am faced with the facts of where I am in life and where I want to be. Sure, I love teaching. Really, I do, even on those frustrating days when I feel like I am talking to a brick wall of emotionless faces. There is nothing like that breakthrough that occurs, usually few and far between, sure, but so awesome when it does come. However, I have to consider which dreams brought me to the place where I now stand. I started college at 18 saying that I knew I would always read and write, but I needed to do something to support myself. I changed my mind right away when I realized I needed to become a master of reading and writing in order to support myself as a writer, which was what I really wanted to do. Then at 21 I was recommended to supplemental instruction, and at 22 I got my own classroom. I am 26 now, almost done, sharing my love for reading and writing with tons of people every day. That's the dream, right? Well, almost. I read almost constantly. I teach how to write, what to write, how to read in order to write better, and I talk about reading and writing to 100 or more people every day. Also, I read their papers, read their lessons with them, and read a novel a week (except right now the novel I am reading is 2,000 pages long, so it's taking at least 2 weeks) but when do I follow my dreams? When do I write for me? And the thesis I wrote in blood isn't for me; it's writing, yes, it benefits me in the future, yes, yes and still yes. But dreams. They will probably nag at me forever, and if I don't complete them, the regret will take the place of the dreams themselves in torturing me in my sleep. I've been talking about this forever and doing nothing about it, but then what could I do while bleeding out over the pages of a giant document that could seal my fate for the future. I have to take the path slowly and wisely, but I wonder if now is the time to begin considering which fork in the road to take. I think I am certain of where my interest lies...where it has always lain...where it always will...okay, I am not trying to write "lie" in every tense possible...I get silly when I think too much.