“Fears are educated into us, and can, if we wish, be educated out.” – Karl Augustus Menninger
I first wanted to start a blog when I was 17. But I was too afraid of what others might think of my writing and me by extension. I wanted to start a blog in College, and when I was at Yeshiva, and when I was a caterer, and when I got married, and when got into startups. And I was always too afraid, and always of the same things. It’s been 18 years now. And my fear of “officially” writing down my thoughts and sharing them with people is now old enough to vote, buy porn, and start a family of its own. Yet I keep insisting that it should keep living in my head and drinking all the milk in the fridge.
I have my share of other fears. But fear of writing has a really special place in my heart. Not a lot of people know this. But when I was in College, I got Fs on 7 different courses for not turning in a final paper. Those were the school rules – no Final paper – automatic F. The professors had to do it. And they hated to. Two of them begged me to turn anything in. One even asked: “Just give me a blank page with your name on it, and you will have a B on the course from all the other work that you did. Please, just turn in a blank page.” But I did not. And got an F. And then I hid from him on campus. I did really well on the courses that didn’t have a final paper (4 A+s even). So my GPA never got low enough for me to be kicked out. The deans didn’t know what to do with me. So they sent me to therapy. For perfectionism. College was good times. Crazy good.
I would like to say that at 35, with a family, a ranch and startup job, that I don’t really care about writing. Or that it doesn’t scare me in the same way. But it does. And I have spent most of my adult life assiduously avoiding any occupation that requires any degree of public written expression. Now I write a lot. And I love doing it. I write inappropriately long emails. I write inappropriately long Facebook posts. I write inappropriately long training manual introductions for my Pakistani QA interns. But I don’t “officially” write. It’s just something that happens when I don’t think about it. The distinction is lost on everyone else except for my fears.
There is nothing that creative about my writing fears. Just the usual. I’m afraid of being judged. Of you, the nebulous audience, thinking that whatever your read was stupid or silly or boring or whiny. That it won’t be perfectly entertaining of educational. That through my writing, you will get to see into my mind and soul, and see that I am actually not as smart or special as you might have thought. That it will be the paper trail of my well hidden ordinariness. And as I write this my fear voice is performing a music video with a backup a gospel chorus as a backup.
So this blog is a response to that fear. Because it’s time that fear moved out and got a job. And I don’t want my fears with writing to take up all of my time, or to obsess about editing to get it just right. So this blog is going to have some Rules.
The Rules:
- I have no more than 1 hour to write a single blog post once I start.
- Once I start, I have to publish what I wrote. No matter what shape it’s in. Unfinished, unedited, boring, stupid – it has to be published.
- Once a post is posted. I can’t edit any of it until a full week has passed. (Maybe more.)
Its an exercise in writing something short, and putting it out without having the time to obsess and over edit it. I just have to write, post, and take the consequences as they are.
And now Im at 1 hour and 33 seconds. Time to post.
