And here's my old friend fear

Just when I thought I'd banished him forever....

So, a funny thing happened today.

Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash

I started getting subscribers to this, my newly reconstituted writing blog. Which, don’t get me wrong, is WONDERFUL. I’m so happy to be back on a blogging space where I feel comfortable. And the fact that I’m getting subscribers proves that my hopes that this can grow into a community space are well-founded. It’s all very exciting.

Upon seeing subscribers flood trickle into my inbox my first thought was that I’d better get busy on that post I planned to write this week. And my second thought was…well, it wasn’t a thought. It was a feeling. The feeling of freezing. Of blanking. (I’m an Enneagram Nine—we go vague easily when overwhelmed.) Of panicking. But I’ve been writing long enough now to know that these are just aspects of my old friend fear raising his head.

And I know what those fears are, too—fear that, first of all, people will read the post! (Which is the point. But fear is not logical.) When they read the post they will judge it. And me. And the fear that I’m not good enough. That I’ll be embarrassed. On and on and on—you can probably add your own list of emotions to mine.

This is the part of the post where you expect me to tell you that I rose about those fears and went right to the computer to write. But that didn’t happen. Instead, I procrastinated. Went out for coffee with a friend and then procrastinated some more. And then I realized something.

Here was my chance to put myself back into the headspace of my clients, to better understand how they feel when they put their writing into the world. It’s not that I don’t feel these fears around putting my work out into the world anymore. It’s that I’ve inured myself to it enough that the fears pass through quickly. I’ve published three novels, written a weekly newsletter for years, written on Medium, and wrote my own blog for what feels like about five thousand years. (You can find links to all those places on my first post, I’m not going to burden you by putting them in again.) It’s like the old saying says, feel the fear and do it anyway.

Because that’s what it’s really all about. The fear doesn’t go away, you have to live with it. You have to take a deep breath when you push the publish button for the post, or press send on the query to that potential agent, or call the potential client, or appear on zoom with a new writing group or whatever. Sometimes you have to take that breath and another and another another before you even have the courage to face yourself on the page, before you even start writing.

But every time you do it, it gets easier. I promise. And one day, you’ll realize that the fear it took you so long to face now is just a quick flash, easily forgotten when you’ve done the thing. Honestly, whatever Nike marketing person thought up the slogan just do it was a certifiable genius. Because that is what it is all about.

It is just that easy. And also that hard.

And since I am the incurable Pollyanna (I just found the results of the Clifton strength finder test I took a few years ago and my highest skill is positivity) I will say that I welcomed the chance to experience fear when writing this post so that I could remember all this and use it to help others. Oh dear lord that sounds so schmaltzy I can barely stand it and part of me is screaming that you all will judge me harshly for it. But I’m leaving it in, because it’s true.

It’s true that fear can be your friend. And I have to admit I had no idea I was going to come to this conclusion when I started writing this post. But I realize it is the main point. Phew.

And now I’m going to take a deep breath and push publish.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on dealing with fear. How do you deal with it when it arises?