#reverb10 Prompt: Beyond avoidance. “What should you have done this year but didn’t because you were too scared, worried, unsure, busy or otherwise deterred from doing?”
I should have revised the novel I wrote instead of chickening out and just taking a teaching job. Because I got positive feedback from agents on it. Because I knew myself what needed to be fixed.
Even so, I went totally BEYOND avoidance, and said “I’ll get back to it someday. Not today.”
Oh, and there was no “deterred” from doing, though many of my excuses may have made it seem like that. It was plain old terror of failure that has left it locked up in the external hard drive on this desk. With its one blue eye staring at me, day after day.
(Bonus: Will you do it?)
Hmmm. I don’t know. On a “Self-Belief as a Writer” scale, I’d give myself a 5.2. I know I CAN do it. I even wonder WHY I haven’t done it and others have.
Yet I seem to always get only halfway there, or so.
Oddly, with so many projects, the minute I flush the fear and get on with things, I seem to instantly reach the finish line.
I mean, not actually instantly. But when the glue of fear has been unstuck, it’s as if action becomes completely effortless.
Like breathing in sleep.
Unfortunately, right now I am very busy tossing and turning.
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