The Golden Ring

Ok, I'm going to get a little serious on you now. No, really, I am. I swear. I felt a feeling yesterday that I haven't felt since probably my freshmen year of college. The best way to describe it in one word. Fear.

It was 7:45 am when I woke to the sound of my alarm going off. The only bad thing about that was that the alarm had been going off for 45 minutes and my Intro to Engineering 1 final started at the exact same time. Needless to say, I was going to be late. The predicament here was, if you're late, you can't take the exam and by not taking the exam I would undoubtedly fail the class. On the double, I threw some clothes on and sprinted down the stairs of my dorm, out the front door and across campus hoping to be able to talk the professor into letting me take the test anyway or at least make it up. To make a long story short, I convinced my professor to let me take the exam later. Sometimes I'm a lucky little fucker. I'll always remember the feeling I had that morning when, looking at the alarm clock, I came to grips with the ramifications of what had just transpired. Your stomach drops, there's a tightness that develops in your chest, like someone has wrapped your lungs in cellophane wrap or put your torso in a vice, making it hard to breathe. Independent of the temperature of the room, you begin to sweat. I'll call these "the cold sweats". There are several other less intellectual situations that can cause them but let’s not get into that now.

I had that same gut-wrenching feeling while at work, sitting at my computer, yesterday and the cause of the feeling was something that I never expected. I was thinking about this blog. I know, pretty stupid, but sometimes you can't help how you feel. However illogical, confusing, and irrational the feelings are. The fear I felt the morning of the exam was one of failure. However, after having a day to reflect. The fear I have of blogging is two-fold. It stems from and includes failure but it’s more than that. It’s a fear of acceptance.

Fuck. Trust me; I know I'm not the best writer in the world, on blogger, hell – probably even in my office, by a long shot. If you want to see what good writing looks like go to devil's advocate (www.devad.blogspot.com). That dude knows how to write. Actually, don’t go there or else my stuff will look like shit. Not being best or even good at something is where the fear of failure comes in. For me to do something, so public, that I don't think I'm really good at is difficult. But I needed a way to express myself, to put something out there. Even if I’m exposing myself to the elements. Even if no one ever sees it. At least it’s there. I tell myself all the time that I'm going to go home from work and write songs and play guitar but I never get around to the song writing part. If I had written a song, what good would it do anyway because it would sit at my desk, in the office at home, and would never see the light of day. Creating something; art, music, writing, baking a cake, whatever, if fulfilling in a sense. But the test of a person’s worth is sharing that creation, which has meaning to you, with someone else. I needed something creative that was subject to others opinions, i.e. blog. Which leads me the second aspect of my fear. Acceptance. I'm a self-confident, somewhat conceded (purely hearsay and conjecture) person who, in any normal situation wouldn't bat an eye at expressing my opinion, or trying something new. This is just so out of my element. I feel like I'm exploring a jungle without a map and no knowledge of the native people, survival skills or animal life; leaving me vulnerable to any number of cruel figurative deaths. Despite the fact that internet is an impersonal forum, this experience seems somehow more personal, susceptible, in a way I can’t fully explain. Anyone else feel this way when they started?

With all that said, I know I need to do this for the very reason that I'm afraid. Because it’s out of my comfort zone. If can't muster the courage to do this, to challenge myself, and trust me I don't think this is some huge thing I'm doing here, its not like I'm going Alaskan crab fishing (Deadliest Catch is the shit) or climbing a mountain here or anything, what good am I? Josh Billings said, “Contentment is a kind of moral laziness; if there weren’t anything but contentment in his world, man wouldn't be any more of a success than an angleworm is” (I think this quote is correct, it looked like thinkexist.com butchered it but I’m sure some can tell me if I’m right or wrong). I need to leave the known and take a step towards the bottomless abyss.

Sometime the thing that keeps us from reaching for the golden ring isn't the voices of the people around us, but the little voice inside of us. And sometimes that little voice is right, but sometimes you have to tell that little voice to shut the fuck up, 'cause your doing this thing. Its like in the movie High Fidelity, John Cusack's character, during a monologue, says, "I've come to the conclusion that my guts have shit for brains". I'm going to take the step and reach for the golden ring because I believe that it's important.