What I Worry About is Not the Problem

Maybe what I worried about is not the problem. Maybe it’s not about finding the perfect topic to write about, a suitable domain, the optimal platform to publish at. Maybe the problem is keeping myself stagnant by making myself belief that these things need to be sorted out before I can sit down to write and publish again.

There’s a simple truth about life and time I rarely acknowledge and even less live by:

The human lifespan is so infinitessimally small in the grand scheme of things. It is unimaginably unimportant.

120 years from now, everyone I know will be dead. The places I visited will look vastly different. The technology I use will be exhibited in museums.

Everything I worry about and beat myself with in my minds, it all won’t matter anymore. And yet, I take everything so seriously.

These realizations reached me only rationally. No emotional impact. The fears that dragged me into avoidance are still there.

What if…
..someone thinks X?
…someone says Y?
…no one cares?

Reason tells me: “The hordes of imaginary critics will be dead within two centuries.” And even in the here and now: “Someone else’s words only attack me once. It is me who keeps beating myself up with them by repeating them in my mind.”

Emotion counters: “I don’t like this. I’m afraid. Stop! Better be safe than sorry.”

However much I like to think of myself as a rational thinker and man of science, I’ve often followed my fearful emotional mind and let it steer.

But every time I do anything (however little) despite of these worries, I get the chance to change.