I’m considering doing something in May that I’ve never done before. It’s big, to me, and I’m scared.
Korea has continued to teach me to do things I’ve never done before. I’m getting more and more used to that. What I’m not used to, though, is doing things that are big.
Big of course is relative. For some, speaking in front of a dozen people is big. For others, trying to speak to a stranger in another language is big. Maybe big is flying in an airplane. Maybe big is having a second child.
To me now, this is big.
But I have this nagging feeling that if something is big and scary and I’ve never done it before, it’s probably something I should do. It’s not always the case. I don’t want to let bigness or scariness or newness guide my life. But still, those three tend to point toward projects that have better reasons behind them.
This project qualifies on all three counts. All three point to better reasons. All three point to launching. Right now, though, two things in particular scare me about it:
- It means commitment. Once I announce it and once the process starts, it means a major commitment in my life, something that will continue to play out for the rest of my life, not just for a month or a year or whatever.
- It means opening the possibility of failure, failure in that maybe no one will participate, failure in that maybe I’ll end up looking ridiculous, failure in that maybe people will end up seeing a part of me that’s vulnerable.
The upside seems to outweigh the downside. In fact, almost everything I’ve ever read or written or considered to be true or actually believed, all of it, seems to point toward launching the project. But it still feels big and uncertain and scary.
