Fear

Fear is my enemy. It keeps me from doing what I want to do. Dangerously, it sometimes keeps me from doing what I need to do.

I fear making the wrong decision so I make no decision. Anyone who has seen my attempts (or lack thereof) at home decorating will attest. We have curtains but they are "cheap, disposable, thrown up in a hurry so I can tear them down in a hurry and not fret over the wasted money" type of curtains. This is true in every single room of the house.

Curtains are expensive and I can't really see in my mind's eye what I want or need to cover the windows and get the room to feel the way I want it to feel. I fear making a decision that doesn't look good and having to stare at that decision every single day. And worse subject my family and guests to that decision. And I won't be able to just throw it away because that would be a waste of money and bad for the planet.

Honestly though does my fear of making and living with an errant interior decorating decision ruin my life? No. Does it even diminish the joy I find in my life? Not really. Not when compared to the joy I get when my daughter cuddles up to me with her "I just woke up" eyes and mummy's warm safe body is all she wants right now.

But my fears runs deeper, ever so deeper, than that fabric swatch surface.

I didn't make any plans for the summer holidays last year. I had a vague idea of all the things we wanted to do and I was afraid if I started planning we wouldn't get to do all the things I wanted.  Phew, glad that didn't happen and we scrapped by.

I have had only 3 really grown up jobs in my life. I don't count the jobs before university. Those were practice jobs. But once I got serious about who I was and what I wanted to do with my career I found a job and I stayed there. The first job I stayed far too long than was good for me. The second job they pushed me out because I wouldn't jump when I needed to change from a traveling crazy haired consultant to a mum who lived just down the road from where she worked. Now I'm in my third job. I've been there for almost 8 years now. Some might say I need a change. I'm afraid that I change jobs and it ends up being worse than the one I've got, which actually isn't that bad. In fact, it's pretty good. So I stay. I don't even look. I fear no one will want me, which is stupid and idiotic, but real.

But the biggest fear I have right now is that I want to write. I haphazardly write here on this blog and it kept me satisfied for a good long time. But I want to get a bit more serious about my writing. I aim for a novel. I've started one.  Then stopped.  Then started again.

Now I'm writing a lot of blog posts and a little bit of my novel and a lot of another book and a screenplay and a couple poems (I am bad at poetry).  Every day I think of new ideas to write and suddenly there just isn't enough time in the day to write.  The other night I was up til 1 am and woke up at 5:30 am fearful that the thoughts in my head just wouldn't be there when I woke up if I went back to sleep, like a dream you wan to remember but can't.  One fear replaces another fear.

So I'm going to stop writing this and start writing something else.  Just to let you know, my fear is still there.  But I've asked it to go out for a bit and let me get on.  I've got a lot to do.