It rolled in like the tide this morning, and I’ve just deleted three long and convoluted paragraphs of the pathetic fallacy, because it doesn’t really matter what caused it, environmentally or otherwise. Doing one’s accounts isn’t causal; it’s more like an obligatory look at the horizon that may or may not show a small-hold farmer that there’s heavy weather coming in. And better to know what weather there might be, just as it’s better to know what’s out in the fields and stashed in the barn, than not to know.
But there’s not much in the fields and there’s not much stashed in the barn just now, and the part of me that will probably always be a scared child just wants to rail at the unfairness of it all, because I can do the damned work, but finding the work is difficult at the best of times, and even more so when all the more experienced hands are out there gleaning the barren fields as well, because these are not the best of times, not for anyone, not here.
Times like this it’s harder than ever to say the sacred “yes” to everything, to affirm not just what you are but what you have been and will be, come what may. I know in my heart of hearts that it was the right choice for me to walk away from anything that resembled a regular career, long before I even thought of what I was doing in those terms; hell, I know in my heart of hearts that it was never a choice, it was just what I was, what I am.
But I am tired and scared and lonely, and I desperately want some sort of break, something that will let me feel like I’m going to make this thing work. To be clear, I’m not afraid of starvation or homelessness, because that’s not what I’m facing; what I’m afraid of is failing again, not because I can’t do the thing, but because the thing is not there for me to do.
The answer is obvious, of course: get out there and find the thing to be done! And the excuse—that I genuinely don’t know how to do that—is pointless. I either find the work, or I don’t find the work. Ain’t no one else’s problem or responsibility than mine.
And I know that, and I’m facing that, and I know there’s worse problems in the world right now, but this is mine, and I am confessing it to the world on my blog because I really don’t know any other way to talk about this stuff, nor to whom I could confess it to directly, so I am naming it in the hope that naming it will grant me some sort of power over it: I am afraid of failing, and while I’m sure someone’s got a damned good lecture to give me on why it’s an inappropriate or problematic reference, fear is nonetheless the fucking mindkiller, and I can feel it nibbling at my brainstem, but I am not going to let it win, not today.
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