Is there something that scares you? Do you find yourself fearful of any particular thing or individual? Are you completely oblivious to the future and live in a perpetual state of blissful ignorance? Do you laugh at fear and the fearful like a drunken warrior king celebrating life? How do you manage your fear? Do all these questions make you fearful that you aren’t fearful enough??
The only way to overcome my fears is to make films about them. -Alfred Hitchcock
The past 1,249 days have been very odd. If you’re like me, you kinda notice stuff and sometimes you can’t help it. The rhythms and patterns life throws at you become apparent. It can be tiring but it is what it is. For most of my life I’ve worked pretty diligently to mask this aspect of my personality. It’s one of those quirks that could be off-putting to some people. And since I’ve been around regular folks for most of my professional career, I think I learned how to bottle this up fairly well.
One of the patterns I noticed is fear. It’s like a perpetual assault on what could, would or does scare me or you (for that matter). It’s odd and tonight a conversation via text reminded me of this pattern. For awhile, it felt like people believed I was afraid to die, then it was cancer, then corona, then failure, then being unemployed, then the unknown, the election. It’s been exhausting. And I can say, honestly, none of those things scare me in the slightest. I had family friends lose their son and another a husband to cancer. Most recently, a family friend died from heart failure. The most difficult aspect of all of these wasn’t a bizarre fear that I would somehow get these diseases through osmosis (because that makes no damn sense) but how to deal with parents who lost their son. How do I deal with wives, now widows. Not, what would I do if I suddenly, and unexpectedly (because there’s no history of death diseases in my family anywhere) was terminally ill. Most things in life aren’t about me or you, at all. And in these cases, it wasn’t about me either. It was about helping people morn something unnatural. Death. More specifically, the death of a loved one. For more information on my thoughts on death, click here.
The fear of failure also isn’t a thing for me. I moved to Florida and that failed and I was forced to move back to Arizona. I’ve been fired from jobs which is also failure. The past 1,249 days… I know something is going on even though I have no idea what it is. So, since I haven’t been able to solve this riddle and get paid in a lawsuit, it’s been 1,249 days of failure. Yes, you read that right. Almost four years of constant failure. And yet, here I am. Still standing tall. Still working out. Still celebrating the fact I wrote and published a book. Still enjoying photography (which you can see on the side bar to the right). Still enjoying music even though I haven’t been into a recording studio to actually record anything in years. The last time I was in a recording studio was a few years back. I toured Capitol Records in Hollywood. I didn’t record anything there. It was just an opportunity to visit and check it out. It was a cool experience. I still enjoy film making. In fact, I’ve got a short film I’m about to release online to go with a few other short films I’ve already released. And I still enjoy writing these entries for you to read.
There’s been other patterns I’ve noticed too. However, this one was brought up again tonight through a text convo. And I am exhausted and over whatever has been going on these past 1,249 days. I want my lawsuit money and I want to travel. In the meanwhile, exercise has proven to be beneficial for a few reasons. I’ve been making progress that I wasn’t sure I’d be able to achieve at my age. Plus, I’ve been working on and off with different companies here in town on short term contracts which has provided some money. Is any of this what I wanted to do with my life at almost 40? Absolutely not. In fact, it’s not even close to what I envisioned for my life (more failure). But as long as I can figure out whatever this game is and get that lawsuit money, I’ll be fine. Short term annoyance for a life time payout. I think I can work with that. Plus, I’m healthy and fit. So, I’ve got decades (Lord willing) ahead of me to enjoy the spoils of war.
Sometimes, we face our fears head on. Sometimes, like Mr. Hitchcock, we make films about them. Sometimes, we just ignore them. There’s religion and faith that helps people overcome fear. There’s logic and rational understanding that guides people through the steps that delivered them to fear. And as we all learned as kids, sometimes our fears are completely irrational. There are no monsters under the bed. Fear is an odd emotion to be sure and it can make people act irrationally. Let’s hope the next time fear tries to rear its ugly head, we are fortified enough to laugh in its face, or, at the very least, calm enough to bop its nose and then move on with our lives.
Good luck overcoming your fears. If you need recommendations I wrote a thing awhile back, click here.
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