We’re all scared of getting it wrong.
When I got home last night, I was exhausted. Yesterday was a long day. I stepped into my apartment and poured myself a cup of hot Chai tea. I dropped the needle on a crackling old Miles Davis album and stretched out.
My neighborhood gets quiet, late at night, and with only the sound of a few passing cars, I listened to the greatest Jazz ever recorded…and settled into a desperate panic.
Last night, I started freaking the fuck out, imagining the next ten years of my life, and the next twenty, and questioning everything I’ve ever done. I started wondering about what my life meant, and what my choices would lead to, and whether I’ll be happy the day I die.
I started dreaming about what could have been, or would have been, or should have been, if I’d worked harder. If I’d worked at that company instead of this company. If I hadn’t dropped out of law school. If I’d finished writing a book. If I’d written more short stories, less blog posts.
That freak out? That panic? I wish I could tell you it’s out of the ordinary, or something unusual, but it’s not. That’s how I live my life. I live on a swinging scale, where I’m either on top of the world, or I’m in the grips of a clutching fear that my life is going off the rails — there’s no in-between.
When I was younger, I thought that I was unusual. I assumed that the rest of the world was running smoothly, and I was the only dysfunctional one in the bunch. That’s not the way I see things now.
I see everyone struggling in the same way as me. I know, no matter how deep down they’ve hidden it, everyone is panicking, and shaking, and living in fear. Everyone worries about their choices, the things they’ve done, the things they’ve avoided.
It comes down to a fear of being wrong, and a fear of failure. I’ve written before, about failure being something we shouldn’t shy away from. I’ve talked about my journey to try to fail every year…but sometimes, it still catches up with me.
If you feel the same way, if you find yourself scared and questioning, you’re not alone in it — even though it may seem that way.
I think there are too many people who try and present a smiling, sexy, happy, glamorous version of themselves online. Their lives appear perfect, without a glimpse into the shadows and the shit that keeps them up at night.
But that’s not me. I’ve got fractures, and cracks and I’m damaged, and I don’t mind admitting to it.
It’s naive to think failure is the only thing worth fearing. But it’s also naive to think I’ll ever fully get past it. It’s a part of the human condition, being scared shitless that it’s all going to fall apart, that people will laugh at us, and that we’ll never find a way back.
It’s a part of the human condition to freak out about what’s going to happen next. That’s why we’ve all been predicting the end times since Ancient Greece . That’s why we pressure our kids to study useless crap in high school that the real world doesn’t care about, and tell them they only get one shot.
That’s why every writer who has ever emailed me asking for advice has said their biggest problem is hitting publish.
When people ask me about how to write, how to be sure a blog post is ready, when’s the right time to pull the trigger on that article, I always tell them the same thing. You’ll never know.
I think they expect me to have the answers, I think they believe that I write from a place of total emotional certainty, where I know, deep down, that what I’m doing is right. But that’s not the case.
I panic, and I get scared, and then I pull myself back up and remember that failure isn’t the end of the road. It’s just a brief pit-stop in a longer race.
No matter how far you get, you’ll always have that panic. That should be comforting to you — it shows that accomplishing anything is eminently possible. When the panic sets in, it doesn’t mean you’re not ready, or you’re not good enough. It means you’re just like everyone else, scared and uncertain. And it means you’re not alone.
xox Joany 🍕