It was 3:30 am and I woke up with that nervous feeling in my stomach. The part of me that I have given so much space to live and stretch out into all my creative ambitions. The one that is terrified of failure. The one that likes to give up when things get too challenging. The one that tells me can’t win, don’t try. He feels really loud right now. He isn’t even mean about it, he sounds so reasonable.
It’s okay he says you knew you couldn’t do this. We gave it a try for a few days. It’s okay now Eli just face it you’re going to have to go back to a 9-5. Think of how much easier that will be. How less scary it is. How you won’t have to think. You just go to work, do a job and go home. Remember that? How easy it was to get that regular paycheck?
But then I try to remember how miserable I was. How frustrated I became living in the corporate grind. Yea I had a steady paycheck, but at the cost of my creativity. At the cost of my dreams, dreams I have often been too afraid to even say out loud.
I want to dream again, I want to be creative again, I want to be up for new challenges again, I want to be someone that adds to the world, not just another mindless cog in the machine. I want to conquer this fear, I want it to be okay to fail, and try again. How many times did I keep myself from starting.
I hope I’m on the right track. I’m trying to use this energy to push forward. I woke up at 3:30 am and got a glass of water and made some progress. I applied for an Amazon merch account, and now with the rest of this energy I’m writing this to you, to me, to anyone and everyone that’s been afraid and still afraid. It’s not too late to begin. The scary probably isn’t going away anytime soon. We just need to learn to coexist with it. Push through with it, and maybe even down the line welcome it to the team. It’s a part of us that isn’t going away, and while we can’t and shouldn’t destroy it, we definitely don’t need to let it dominate us. We are calling the shots.