Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway was one of the many, many self-help books I would stare down in my mother’s bookcase when I was a kid. This book eventually came with me to my college dorm where it would continue to torment me as a fresh adult.
Instead of accepting that books like this were not torture machines in the form of paper but in fact, actually were self-help books, I took them each as a personal challenge.
I was crippled by the fear of starting anything in case I failed. It wasn’t until a few months ago where my ego finally agreed that I fail all the time. Almost every day. So failure wasn’t even that special.
Miss my mouth while drinking = Fail
Follow the five-second rule = Fail (You are eating off the ground! You can do better.)
Ignore important email until it was way too late to respond = Fail
Tell myself today is going to be productive then watch hours of Netflix (and I mean hours) = Fail
These tiny failures did not lead to my imminent death. Neither did slightly bigger failures.
Receive a rejection letter from a magazine = Fail
Didn’t tell my mom happy mother’s day = Fail
Forgot my best friend’s birthday = Fail
Missed the deadline for a dream job application = Fail
I survived that too. Of course, there is guilt and possibly tears, over way larger failures but unless your failure was smoking 6 packs of cigarettes a day for 20 years or that you refused to wear your seatbelt because it wrinkled your freshly dry cleaned dress then most likely you won’t die from it.
But if you do die at least your dress was wrinkle-free and you looked like Snow White in your coffin. It’s the little things that truly matter.
I am terrified right now as I type this but I think I’m finally understanding some of those self-help books that used to haunt me. I am literally experiencing fear right now and doing it anyway.
The idea of starting this website and publishing very intimate details about myself onto the internet was both ill-advised by many (including that public speaker who would come to your high school and warn you that everything you post will come back and bite you in the ass and no one will hire you and you’ll live in your parent’s basement forever and no one will love you so don’t even think of updating your MySpace account, Jessica) and frightening to me but for some reason I did it anyway.
I am only two months into Girls Aren’t Funny and each month individually had over 100 unique visitors and close to 500 views of people possibly refreshing the page. Honestly, whether you think that is good news or not, personally that way exceeded my expectation. I legit assumed even my mom wouldn’t read it. So thank you, thank you so much.
Right now I am researching for Girls Aren’t Funny’s Modern Feminist Project podcast and it is just another layer of scary. My stomach lurches when I see famous women get trolled on Twitter and I want to hide under the covers. Why would I want to join the conversation if that’s literally the best thing that can happen to me?
Literally, the best thing would be if I became successful in my endeavor to answer some of life’s goddamn stupid questions as a woman who wants to do good by other women and then some loser named Trevor69 calls me fat.
And you know what? I’m excited. I’m fucking stoked. Bring it on, Trevor69!
Again, if you have any interest being interviewed on the podcast or have anything you’d like to share about your experience as a ladyfolk (oh god I regretted that immediately) please reach out through the comments, the contact form or via our gaf.submissions@gmail.com.
All this overcoming fear is making me hungry. I’m going to go eat Mexican food, bye.