Failing for Fear of Failure

You can fail at what you don’t want, so you might as well take a chance doing what you love.” -Jim Carrey paraphrasing his father paraphrasing George Burns

It has been one year since I started this entry-less blog. Fueled by visions of a freelance writing career, quitting my job to travel full time, and connecting people with wildlife around the world, I purchased shesinthewild.com. I signed up for wix, nabbed the handle on facebook, Instagram, and youtube, and spent hours agonizing over font and color choices. I read articles on brand building, SEO, social media, and attracting advertisers. I did everything to launch a successful blog... except write.

Sure, I was busy balancing my full-time job, grad school, volunteering, and (occasionally) a social life. I was busy balancing adulting with adventuring. In between zoom calls, I bottle fed baby monkeys, milked a cow with Masai women, road horseback with rhinos, and had countless once-in-a lifetime experiences in a single year. So why didn’t I share them? Why didn’t I spend every flight, layover, and bus ride scribbling in a notebook?

The answer is so basic it makes me cringe. Fear of failure. Officially known as atychicphobia, this crippling fear keeps millions from accomplishing their goals. More people are afraid of failure than of spider, snakes, or heights. I personally have no problem rappelling off cliffs or handling spiders or snakes. Many even describe me as brave. Yet, the idea of failing at something that I want so badly, something that I’ve been told my entire life I am good at, has kept me from doing it at all.

How can one even fail at writing? I could fail at making money writing. I could fail to publish my work. But the only way to truly fail at writing is to fail to write. So, after an entire year (okay years), I am going to stop failing and start writing. Starting now.

One year ago at an Airbnb in Puerto Viejo, Costa Rica creating shesinthewild.com