Fear

What makes me fearful?

Let me begin instead with a few things that do not make me fearful. I don’t think I have any actual phobias anymore. I don’t really look at anything and feel an instant sense of fear and not wanting anything to do with it. I think that when I was younger I may have had arachnophobia, a fear of spiders, but I’ve had experiences since that time which would say that I’ve overcome it. Another thing I don’t fear is people. While I do occasionally fear what people may think of me or rejection, I don’t fear anyone for who they are or what they can do. This fear as well as the next could be faulty to a point that perhaps I do not fear them enough to be more cautious of them. I’m not a reckless person, and I do exercise caution, but I don’t let fear control what I decide to do. The next fear is the fear of death. This is one of the most common fears that people have, and it’s not as if I have nothing to live for, but that I’ve accepted that someday I will die, there’s no avoiding that. I also have to thank my religious beliefs for not fearing dying anymore, I believe that after I die, I’ll be going to a better place as long as I keep doing everything I can to be good. I’m definitely not in a rush to die, it will happen when it’s my time. I also believe that God expects certain things for me to do, along with keeping my beliefs, so while I don’t want to die until it’s my time, I don’t fear it either. I’ve had a few near death experiences in my lifetime, but I only feared the first one, and I have not feared it since.

            Refocusing back to what I do fear, first it’s a few common ones: Fears of failure, rejection, and maybe public speaking. I say maybe for public speaking because I don’t like to publicly speak, unless I have time to prepare for it. If I prepare for it in advance, the fear is gone. With the fear of failure, this is a pretty common one. I…Really… don’t want to fail in life. This is a hard fear for me to cope with, even harder than it was for me to stop fearing death. I don’t want to fail people who rely on me, I don’t want to fail God, I don’t want to fail while pursuing my dreams, there are just so many things that I’m very fearful about failing. I’m not only worried about failing whatever job I get into or ideas that I create, but I’m worried about failing to even reach that position. I want to write stories for visual mediums, the window of opportunity for getting a job in that field is smaller than one of my eyes, and probably even tougher to get into without connections. I actually freeze up sometimes when I think about how tough this choice might be, but I need to go for it. I know that trying to do this means that I’ll either make it or break down into nothing. I have a backup plan of studying 3D modeling and animation, but what if I fail that? Even if I pass through college with flying colors, but fail at getting a job or keeping it, I’ll basically fail everyone I’ve ever talked to or ever known, I might even fail God. I know failure is a necessary obstacle to reach success, but it brings up the question: How far can we fail before it gets out of hand?

            Rejection kind of goes hand in hand with failing to me: If I or my ideas are rejected, I’ve failed. I used to have another part of rejection that I feared, rejection from other people, but I’ve learned to get over that as time went on. While I do like being accepted by people, I don’t usually let that govern how I am as a person, though it kind of does. I don’t really like to talk unless it’s something that needs to be said. I feel as though I need to put on another personality while in public just to be at least half accepted by others. I don’t change either personality for people, but know that everyone has different opinions, and that it’s completely impossible to please everyone. The kind of rejection I really fear is having my ideas rejected outright. I have three main ideas that I want to spend a lot of time working on, two of which are extremely important to me. I can definitely think of other ideas for production, but if I can’t work on those ideas because they’ve been rejected, after all the time I’ll be spending to get into the business, I feel as though I will have completely failed again and I’ll truly be useless. A short side fear, the feeling of being completely useless. It’s not that great of a fear to me, but I just don’t want to be useless.

            These fears sometimes manifest as a blockade against me. They’re not phobias to me, but are more along the lines of anxiety and worries. I notice these fears in ways that just really get me down sometimes. I can be having a great day, but if I think about the problems that the future might hold, I definitely feel a sinking feeling. I do a good job to put on a mask to disguise the fact that I fear certain things, but the fact remains, I fear. Sometimes these feelings keep me from taking risks, I feel like I need to be so careful or risk doing something stupid and ruining my chances of ever succeeding in the pursuit of my ultimate goals. This kind of ties into how I am trying to learn to use these fears to my advantage; though sometimes, it’s hard to look at the bright side. I use these fears to keep myself in check of what I say and do, just to make sure that I don’t do something too risky or stupid. I also use it in a way that I know I need to try my best in everything my do, because there is a purpose for everything, and it’s because of that reason that I’ll always do my best wherever I can. I definitely feel as though fear affects my life in a creative sense, I feel as though I have to limit myself sometimes to stay realistic. As mentioned before, these fears take the form of a blockade. They can either be a blockade to protect me from certain choices, or the blockade that prevents me from moving forward.

            In the end, making a project about fear does in fact provoke all of these mentioned fears. Will it be rejected by the audience? The instructor? Will I completely fail it? Will I speak correctly while presenting my fears to a bunch of people in my class? Will the idea I made for the presentation scare the class? I don’t know the answers to any of these questions, but I feel like actually saying something about a topic like this could be beneficial to me as well. Believe me, I’m extremely worried about this assignment and I’m not sure how it’s going to work out. But like the fears I have with my ultimate goals, I just have to go forward and try my best.