Who Am I? – Writing Exercise

Every living thing has fear. It’s innate, and it’s a good thing to have. It gives us a way to understand the context of life and be able to evaluate whether or not something is good or bad. In fact, most opinions are based on one’s fear of a situation or person. We will always be scared one way or another.

I have been incredibly aware of that innate fear for a good portion of my life, and, like a lot of things in life, it changes. When I was little, I was scared of having no friends or losing my family. When I was in middle school, I was scared of being discovered as the only gay kid in my grade. When I was in high school, I was scared of not going to college.

And now I’m in college. I’m here, and–not surprisingly–my innate sense of fear has not randomly evaporated. In fact, it’s probably as evident as it has ever been. I’m just so fucking scared of this all being for nothing. I’m scared that all the involvement, the industry experience, the classes will just amount to student loans and feelings of “I should’ve been.” This fear is here and no matter how hard I try:

I cannot get rid of it. And that’s a good thing.

If it was something I could get rid of, I would break the first law of thermodynamics. Energy cannot be created or destroyed, only transferred. Fear is like an energy. It cannot be created or destroyed, only transferred. This is something that I’ve discovered in my life. I can’t get rid of my fear, so I’ll just transfer that energy to ambition and work ethic. I’m so scared of failing that the only logical thing to do is work my ass off in everything I do.

I’m so scared of this being all for nothing, so I’m going to do everything in my power to make sure that this will not be the case.