It’s been hard for me to write lately – just inundated with writer’s block. Like I have an idea, something on my mind that I want to write about, then I go to the screen and nothing comes out. My goal is to write at least one good pre-planned post before this year is out.
So anyway, I’m just last-minute freewriting now, and what I’ve been thinking about lately is risk-taking and how I so often just play it safe and don’t take any risks. Now if you’ve been here for a minute, or you’ve read previous posts, you may be saying, aren’t you the girl that travels by herself and moved to New York by herself without knowing anyone? Then again, I’m not sure if I ever wrote about that, but in any case, yes, yes that is true. I’m that b…ahem, girl. But the thing about that is I have no friends, I haven’t had friends in a long time, so not knowing anyone is not that big of a deal to me. Essentially everywhere I go I don’t know anyone. But I guess since most people are used to hanging around other people, be they real friends or not, they are impressed when someone else deviates from their norm.
For the most part, I don’t think much about going places alone…well, sometimes I do, but usually it’s not that big of a deal, so I don’t look at that as taking a risk. To me, taking a risk is doing something that I’m afraid to do. It’s doing something that I can not only fail at, but that I’m afraid to fail at. It could also be something that there’s a high probability that I will fail at.
Often times, when faced with these risky situations, I don’t even try. I count myself out before I ever get started, and thus I never get started. It’s the issue I have with my writing – writing books and movie scripts. I think it’s why I don’t go as hard as I could because I’m afraid to fail, and failure is inevitable in those fields. As a matter of fact, I’ve already experienced it, which is why it’s taken me so long to get back into it, I’m afraid to fail again.
Now that I’m in the job market again as well, I have that same issue. First of all, I hate searching for jobs. I mean, just the whole job search process is so…I don’t know, uncomfortable to me. I think one of the main reasons for that is because you pretty much have to toot your on horn, promote yourself and I’m not good at that. I guess I can be good at it to a certain extent, but I have to really sike myself up for it. Like I’m much better at promoting something or someone else than I am myself. Then I hate those questions like, tell me about yourself, or why do you want to work here, both of which could be answered with I need a job, but you know, you can’t say that.
With job-hunting where the risk comes in is that I get impostor syndrome. I have to battle thinking that I’m not good enough for certain roles that I want and often times instead of dealing with the anxiety that comes with applying for a job I think I won’t get, I just don’t apply for it. I go for the easier job. But in a really competitive job market, even some of the easier jobs are not that easy to come by.
However, now in my mid-40s, I’m at the age in stage in my life where I don’t want to take the easy way out anymore. I’ve also lived long enough and taken the easy route enough times to know that taking the easy way out is deceptive. What looks like the easy route up front, costs you so much more over time on the back end. It’s like in essence, there really is no easy route. It’s either easy in the beginning, hard in the end, or hard in the beginning, easier in the end. It’s like either way you’re gonna pay – so how do you want to pay?
Now I feel like I just don’t want to waste anymore time not trying. If I fail, let me fail. If I don’t get the job, I don’t get the job. If my book doesn’t sell, it doesn’t sell…but what if it does?
I owe it to myself to at least try. And not even just try, but go hard.
So yeah, I think I’m going to start being more of a risk-taker. What the fuck have I got to lose? What a great place to be in.
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