Fears - fear of becoming a corporate minion, losing control over life - not sure if want kids, messing up - Fear of discomfort and frustration, but then again working at a law firm you're pretty much guaranteed to be frustrated with your work (fighting over piles of money) - fear of failure—I’ve always been good at everything, without even trying that hard (music, sports, school). Scratch that. I’ve always been good at anything that gets you into college.

My fears in life in general—why am I such a coward?

How do I get over this fear? - let go of some control, can’t control everything - learn to take risks, learn to embrace some failures in life: I will always have a safety net, so what if I don’t accomplish every goal?

I need sleep. People talk about how they can “get by” on six hours a night. I can’t do that! If I don’t regularly get nine hours a day, I become useless and lethargic and, eventually, depressed. So whenever I hear law firm people talk about how they look for people they want to be with when they’re “closing that deal at 3am and haven’t seen their family in a week,” all I can think is, the fuck? Why do you have to be up that late anyway? Why do you have to live life like that? It’s not even the amount of work that bothers me, it’s the idea of someone coming in on Friday afternoon and fucking up your entire weekend plans. I feel like no amount of money can make up for that kind of enslavement. Power to the people who choose that path, but I don’t want to become that kind of corporate minion. I’m terrified by the notion of basically becoming a slave to a pile of money. I don’t want to owe anybody such an exorbitant amount of my life. I recently watched a documentary of the photographer Bill Cunningham, and he spoke about how he refused to be paid for a certain magazine job because then he would be beholden to them—they kept sending him checks, and he just kept ripping them up (he had a different day job). He does the same thing when he photographs events—he refuses even a glass of water, let alone food or party favors. It is an interesting notion, just working for free so I can do what I want—it does seem feasible with having my own clients on the side. Back to me being terrified of slavery, which I guess is acceptable. But I have a lot of fears, many of them irrational. For example, I’ve debated whether or not I want children. Largely my hesitation is based on being obligated to an entire human being, who is completely dependent on me. I can barely manage to take care of myself. Right now I have clean laundry that’s been sitting unfolded in the basket for a week. I have a radish in the fridge that I have no idea what the fuck to do with. My brother has a mental disability that might be genetic, and I’m scared of having a messed up kid. I’m scared of messing up myself somehow and creating a screwed up kid just from my own screwups. Professionally, I’m scared of being frustrated with work. Another reason I don’t want to do corporate work, I’d be pretty much guaranteed to be frustrated—it’s just not in me to fight over other people’s money. As far as actual professional interests go, as of now I’m really interested in food justice—making sure every person has access to enough and healthy food. A basic human right. But even going “public interest,” I’m still scared that working in the whole human rights environment will be frustrating with few good results. I’ve met a number of people who just want to work in the public arena for the sake of it, the sheer glamour of working at the World Bank or whatnot. But at least I’ll be trying to help people. What’s the worst that’s going to happen? I’ll never be homeless. It’s just a job, ultimately. I’m starting to realize, though, that I do have a core debilitating fear of failure. It doesn’t help that I’ve always been good at everything, without even trying that hard. At least, the things that get you into college—school, music, sports, writing earnestly. Maybe because of my lack of major failures (observable ones, anyway. Things like interpersonal relationships aside), I’m pretty scared of it. I’m seriously scared of everything. I am a huge, enormous, massive coward. I’ve known this about myself for a while but haven’t tried to deal with it until now. I really realized this while observing my good friend Doug. He went to a shitty state school after getting into the much “better” UVA. I’m pretty sure because he was scared of not doing as well at the better school, and he didn’t know as many people there because all of his high school friends were going to his school. He wanted to be a musician (he was a very talented drummer) but went into the safest job possible, IT management. He wanted to move to Chicago but never went more than ten miles from the house he grew up in, after college. He ended up marrying a girl he dated on-and-off for years and never seemed all that thrilled to be with. I don’t want to be like Doug. I’m afraid of ending up like Doug, ironically—yet another fear. I do want to take risks, and I want to learn to be okay with failure. I guess that means I need to open myself up to failure, and that means I have to try something that I may be quite likely to fail. I don’t know what that is yet, maybe it’ll be career, maybe it’ll just be feeble attempts and gardening or composing music. I’ll have tried.