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11/19/2025: Does Your Fear Look Like the Worst Version of You, Or Is That Just Me?
Sometimes I think fear is a gas. It fills whatever container it’s in.
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I was recently let go. Laid off. Fired. Whatever you want to call it, it means the same thing, “You are not good enough.” I wrote a diary entry the day it happened bright-eyed about how I could use the down time to write. I told myself to keep applying for jobs everyday and write in between applications. That hasn’t happened.
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One of the classes I’m taking this semester had me creating this website as an assignment. Putting my name down with “Author” underneath it didn’t help with the fear. The fear I felt before being fired felt manageable because I had so much else going on. After, it’s taken over the space where a job used to be.
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“You are not good enough.”
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I had the confirmation in front of me. I’m not good enough. Not good enough for a job I didn’t really love. Not good enough for work that didn’t inspire me. Not good enough for a workplace that drained me. If I can’t even do something I don’t like, how can I claim I’m good enough to do something I want?
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The girls I want to write about have lived with me, some of them, for years. They invade my subconscious during the day and shape my dreams at night. I don’t want to let them down by failing their stories. My old boss didn’t trust my ability to write an email by myself. How can I trust myself to do them justice?
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As a writer I think fear is expected. The desire to do a good job. The worry that you won’t. I want to think the difference between like and love is whether you let go when faced with fear or hold on tighter. Whether you run away to something that feels safer or look it in the face until you see it for what it really is.
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“You are not good enough.”
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Plenty of people will think that about you. Plenty of people will say no. It won’t sink into your being unless you believe it too.
I don’t yet know if I’m good enough to tell the stories I want to tell, but I know I want to be. So I will pull the fear in close, strap it in the passenger seat, and say:
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“Come on, baby, we’ve got shit to do.”