How panic and fear can point the way to greatness.

My dear reader, the veg is in the oven, it’s half past 5pm, and I’ve about as much verve now as I did all day; trying to keep good on my attempt to make an experiment of better prioritizing writing this blog when I’m not half dead with the desire for sleep.

The last few posts have more or less been about fear being something you learn to overcome when you take up the mantle of the Professional. I say “learn to” because this is what I am doing now and even through the upkeep of this blog. Those posts were each written with conviction because I was writing from my own experience, my own observations—like field notes from the “Becoming Fray” of a professional writer. A serene and solid sort of clarity overtook me last week on this matter. All the better to share with you in words that might inspire and energize you to consider becoming a professional in your own field, for the gratification and inner sense of peace in “going pro” is unlike anything I’ve known otherwise. 

And yet…

And yet! For all of that sincere, yet poetic crooning about courage and not backing down when fear rears its head, wouldn’t you know that today, after a phone call which had much to do with this “creative journalism” (ie, feature profiles and human interest stories) I’ve taken up (and with great excitement), deadlines were materialized and all the blockades that I thought (handily) stood between me and the actual writing were, in fact, removed. The fear which overtook me after hanging up the phone felt like a thousand echoing bells in my ears, ringing out the blasphemy that is calling myself a “writer.”

I even had the thought yesterday evening that, knowing that I’m not a great writer, if I could just be a good enough writer to make the work that is meaningful to me and to be paid for that work would make me very happy, indeed.

That is, in fact, what I desire in earnest, but why put myself down in the mix??

And then I remembered that there’s thing that happens on the precipice of beginning any work which is going to advance me in the direction toward where my Soul is pointing me.

I’ve mentioned before that Steven Pressfield calls this feeling, the work of “Resistance,” and that’s surely how it feels. But it’s dark, dear reader. It’s so very dark…And personal. It knows me, knows my thoughts and how I feel; it knows exactly what to say to stop me in my tracks.

Before I became a Professional, this is the moment when I would switch on the tv and get lost in the tube for hours. Or take up a lengthy knitting project all of a sudden, and commit myself to that like it was my solemn duty. Anything that required my focus and my attention, and even my skill, just as long as it wasn’t writing.

But part of the “Professionalism Package” are all of the hours you’ve logged, doing what you do in a way that only you can do it. I have countless examples now (Thank God) of staring down this mighty foe and coming through, victorious and changed, on the other side. It truly feels like a Hero’s Journey every time I am standing at the start of a project that feels like a better, more agile version of the person I am now is the only one who can write this, not me.

But only in beginning is the process of transformation and becoming set into motion.

This is why the motif of the “sword and shield” so often finds its way into my writing, and especially my poetry. It’s my reminder to myself that by following a calling and embarking on the path less (or, really, never-before) traveled, I am honing the being who I will need to become in order to enjoy life’s most gratifying fruits.

Happy Monday.