How did I feel when writing my first Odyssey post? The better question is: how did I not feel? I felt every emotion from excited to anxious, from prepared to overwhelmed, but the largest and most overpowering feeling was fear. I was terrified to write my first article. I had no clue what to write about, and the first article feels like the biggest one. It's the one that introduces you to the Odyssey world... the first time people see your writing style, and they see the arch of where you're going to go. My stomach was churning... well, my stomach IS churning while I write this, just thinking about people actually reading it. My hands are sweaty, and my heartbeat is beating irregularly for sure.
What am I so scared of?
Well, all my life I've written, I've written short stories to baby novels to poems to anything I ever wanted. But those were for me. I read them to my parents or sent them to my brothers or best friends, but I was completely in control of who saw it and who had access to them. It's terrifying to put yourself out there in general, but it's more terrifying to lose control of who can see what you put out there. I'm scared, people.
But then, I started thinking about fear and all the times you watch movies, and fear is the motivator of people. All the times in your life, you've heard people talking about how fear wakes them up and keeps them going. I thought about all the movies, TV shows, and books I've read where people have not let their fear stop them but have instead used it to push them further. And beyond fictional, I think about all the historical people in my life who have shaped my world.
Was George Washington scared to lead this new country that he fought so hard for? Was Thomas Edison ever worried about sharing his inventions with people who doubted him incessantly? Did Rosa Park shake a little as she refused to give up her seat on the bus? Was Julia Roberts terrified for her first ever audition?
The more I thought about it, the more I realized that every single person in the world has something in common: we all have faced fear. However, all the content people in the world have something even greater in common: they have been afraid, but they pushed through. They realized that the risk of not trying was greater than the risk of trying and maybe failing.
As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "what you are afraid to do is a clear indication of the next thing you need to do." So, the next thing I need to do is hit "submit" and let this article go to the next person and be released to the world wide web.
I'm scared. I'm nervous. But I don't want to be 70-years-old and look back and think about what could have been if maybe I had given being a creator for Odyssey a try. So, if you're reading this, know that I'm not a success story yet, and I haven't conquered my fears. But I'm decided to be like all the characters I've admired and watched for years and have my own dramatic moment where I decide to push through the fear of not knowing what the outcome will be.
So, Ralph, I'm listening to you. That's why I'm hitting publish.
