#5 Publishing This Blog Might Change My Life
Or I might die without living my potential
I still have the probably naïve idea that publishing this blog might change my life profoundly. But that’s also a fear: that it only might. It includes that on the other side of the spectrum, nothing might happen. That feels more familiar. After all, I registered the domain for this blog over two years ago and it’s still not online.1
If nothing might happen, I’d feel I’ve done it all for naught. What a waste of time and energy and worries and vulnerability if it doesn’t improve my life. What a waste of life. Or, what if it even changed my life for the worse? What if others get at me about it, ridicule or mock me for it?
STOP! Let’s dig into that fear. What’s the likely scenario here? What does my data tell me, now that I've had a few dozen articles up on Medium for about five or six years? Not a single person I know personally or have met on the street has EVER come to me and talked to me about ANY of the posts whatsoever. The only people who have are those I told about a specific article. So much about the spotlight effect.
Ah, but you see things are different if I write about my fears. Because… Because everyone else is out there googling “Anxious Angelo”, or “Obviously socially anxious guy in his thirties whose name I forgot”. And then they will find all my articles. They will then definitely read them and confront me about them.
Sure, not a stretch at all.
Especially, what is there to confront me about when I write honestly about how things are, for me? If anything, it might be so boring that they fall asleep in their gaming chair before finishing the post. (Win for me?)
What about my fear of publishing anything about my fears? Sure, I felt reasonably comfortable writing about self-improvement through developing useful habits, and practicing mindfulness in everyday life. You know, the kind of topics a cruise ship full of people write ‘new’ articles about every day, not to mention that ChatGPT churns out another ten thousand during the first coffee break of those writers.
I realized that writing about those topics feels empty and has much less significance than I initially thought. Not even thinking about the lack of impact on others.
Still, it was safe to publish that stuff.
No one would ever walk up to me and shout out: “Hey, aren’t you that idiot who wrote about being more mindful the other day? Made me want to punch you in the face!”
Not in my mind. I mean, haven’t we all discovered mindfulness for ourselves over the last decade or two? At least we read about it over and over and over again, right?2
It felt safe to publish something mundane like that—safe and meaningless.
But focusing on safety alone will not get me anywhere.
Now, I’m stuck with a tougher subject. Still a universal one and related to mindfulness and self-help, but with a darker undertone and with vulnerability woven into it: FEAR.
I want to write about fear, because I might write it away. No, that’s not true.
I want to write about fear, because I fear it. Better.
I want to write about fear, because I grow when I do.
Because I can practice writing vulnerably by facing fear.
Because the only auspicious way to deal with fear is to notice it, to feel it, to approach it, and, most crucially, to act despite it.
And maybe, if I face my fears repeatedly, I might just unleash potential I don’t want to get buried with.
It is now, since the same day this post was published. I actually finally did it, and I'm glad that no one has noticed yet.
Not that it would make practicing it any easier. After thousands of guided meditations over the course of almost a decade, I still am mostly unable to notice when I switch between sitting, standing, and walking during the day. And that’s on the days I had set the intention to focus on these switches.