it was 95 out and i sat in my car, thinking about how long i've been at this. almost a year now of reading and listening to people talk about fear, every day. and longer than that with my hand going to my chest. the word there is PRESENT. when i drift, my hand goes to the word and i say "here." the one lesson i kept out of all that reading is to push through the fear, in everything i do. for a while i'd been treating the fear as a sign that i was pointed at something worth doing, and that held up. and after all that time there are still days i'm run down. on those days the fear gets loud and wins, and the thing i wanted to do doesn't get done. i can feel it happening and i still don't go. that's a miss with no ask in it. nobody asked me for anything, and no yes went out. i just didn't go. i sat there in the heat with that.
the fear is convincing. it never says i'm scared. it says i can't, or it says wait for the right moment, and i'd wait. it kept me from a lot of things i wanted to do. i used to listen to everything my head said. to how i was raised, to the people around me. and i never sorted out which of that was me and which of it was the fear.
before any of this, i thought life was a big spinning wheel of chances. it went around, something came up, and i went with it. a friend sent me clips back then, self-help stuff, and i listened. nothing showed on the outside. maybe it was adding up somewhere inside, idk.
so why keep at a thing that gets there late, or doesn't get there at all. it isn't because it works. for a long time fear held me on one side of a line, mostly the line where a no would have been. what i've found is that when i do push past it, the one standing on the other side, waiting for me, is me. that's the reason, and it was never what came after. the getting across is the part that changed me. and the more i do it, the more i can tell which voice is mine and which one is the fear. and the days i don't get across, i don't want to call those failing. i've failed at a lot of things. i'm that guy. if the miss is the lesson, then the miss is where i learn, and if there's no miss at all, then what's the lesson. maybe if i had someone teaching me, and i listened, that would be a lesson too. but i've been learning most of this on my own, and the miss is the teacher. and i'm not promised a tomorrow where i'm at my best, so i'd rather push it today.
so i'm still at it. sometimes my hand is there in time. sometimes it's 95 out and i'm sitting in the car with the fear talking louder than me, and i don't go. i'm still at it.