"Take risks, or you lose!"
posted by voh 02:11, 11 September, 08
From the Moleskine Archives
That has to be the most profound and fitting subject to an email spam message I’ve ever received. So profound and fitting, that it set my brain aflutter with thoughts I’ve been too afraid to seriously entertain for far too long now. Too afraid, huh?
Fuck, that’s become my default modus operandi nowadays.
My hypothesis of the situation is the following: I’m too careful, and as a direct result of this I miss out on great and worthwhile chances and opportunities.
Now, my real problem seems to be that I want to be a risk-taker but I don’t know how. I see people do things I view as risky and I wonder why it is, exactly, that I can’t do those things. I’ve wanted to be more daring for, like, ever, but it’s always been far easier for me to just stay in my safe zone. My beautiful and warm comfort zone, where I’m comfortable and warm, and where the only challenges I encounter are those I specifically choose to encounter. And, suddenly, when I’m in my comfort zone, in total control and able to stop whenever I want, I’m able to surprise and outdo myself almost every single time.
Until, of course, I get bored or too frustrated, and all my victories, my conquests, get shoved into a non-descript folder on my hard drive, a non-descript box in the corner of my room or simply whatever non-descript location I happened to last leave it. But that’s my comfort zone, where nobody’s the wiser that I even tried anything. I can just pretend everything’s fine outside of my comfort zone because most of my fuckups happen inside of it, unbeknownst to the world.
That used to be enough, but it just doesn’t cut it anymore. I need outsiders looking in – feedback, stimulation – to share my work with others. Damn, I’d love to share anything with others. I’m getting quite fed up having to figure everything out by myself because I refuse others to help. The building feeling I’m having is that I need to share my victories and conquests with others, because otherwise they’re just dust in the wind. If nobody knows, or the fact that you did it has no real effect on your life, you may as well not have done it.
Over the past few months I’ve tried to involve others in projects, to open up about myself and what I’m trying to do, force myself to share. But once again, I pulled away from it all because I got scared. I stopped taking calls from people involved. I wouldn’t respond to text messages, IMs and emails. I made appointments only to cancel them later on. And in some cases, I was the one suggesting to meet up in the first place. Are you starting to see a pattern? Good, because I am.
The firect result of this is that my projects are at a total standstill, because it feels as if they’re looming over me. As if, when I do work on them, all I’ll manage to do is make them worse. That once they’re done, they’ll fail in an astonishing way and everyone who knows about it will shake their heads in belief and mutter "Typical..." before discussing at length with their friends just how much I suck.
And that’s a terrible thought to have given the amazing amount of time I’ve wasted on it over the years. I know I don’t suck, but it does seem as if my thoughts about myself sort of do. And don’t get me wrong about any of this - I certainly do NOT want to think this way. Hell, I don’t even really know WHY I do!
Objectively speaking, most of my past projects have had their fair share of success. Maybe they weren’t myspace-sized successes, but I’ve been a big kahuna in more online communities than I can remember, and given that the internet is one of my bigger hobbies, that means a lot to me. No matter how sad or dorky any of you thinks that is, I’m fucking proud of some of the things I achieved online. And if you really need to share the dorky nature of this, know that it’ll fall on deaf ears. I know I’m dorky – that’s a part of me I’ve long accepted and nurture with love and dorky tenderness.
Regardless, I’m proud of what I’ve done for abandonware, furthering the cause and helping others out where I could. I’m proud of the unimaginable amount of people who’ve downloaded and used Somery (and its derivatives) over the years. And I’m very proud of what I achieved with Danwa all those years ago, building up a community out of nothing that had a reputation of being one of the nicer places to get hosting on the world wide web.
Not to sound arrogant, but how many of you can say they’ve brought people from all over the world together in a community that managed to go strong for a good three years? Even if it is stale right now, it’s still there – almost 8 years after the fact. It brought some really awesome people together and I was at the base of that happening. That still feels good. At its heyday, it was almost a day job for me. There wouldn’t be a single day I wasn’t working on it in one form or another.
And I loved it. Almost as much as I miss it now.
I still enjoy the internet, but it’s different now that I’m not a proper webmaster anymore. It feels as if I don’t have a direct goal anymore, when I do go online. Sure, I’ve got websites, but they’re “whenever I feel like it” deals rather than what I want. Because what I want is to feel that there’s a job to do. And looking at a timetable I wrote up two years ago, I should’ve been enjoying that feeling for at least a year now. But as you can read, that’s obviously not the case. Want to know why that is?
It’s because I got scared, chickened out and am now terrified of getting back into it. I’m fucking terrified.
And that’s just one small example of how my fuckups come to pass. It happens far more often than that, and with far more different situations than it should. Ever. But I’m not going to sit here and write "...but I don’t know how to change it!" because that’s just cuntwax. Anyone who says that is still firmly rooted in their comfort zone. And while they’re aware that there’s a problem, they’re entirely oblivious to the solution. Which happens to be so incredibly obvious that I feel incredibly stupid just writing it down. But, as a first exercise, screw the fear of sounding stupid, so here goes.
The solution is to fuck your comfort zone up the ass. Hard. Preferably without lubrication of any sort. Even better, have your comfort zone in a gimp mask, a ball gag and...
Sorry, got a little carried away there. I meant that in a figurative way. So where applicable, please remove your genitals from your comforter or the comforter from your genitals. This isn’t that kind of blog post, thank you. Now, read the above paragraph again but try to resist acting on the physical images that form in your head and get the message underneath. Please.
Anyway, to continue, I really needed to get all this out my my head and onto paper. To acknowledge there’s a problem is the first step to solving that problem, I’m told, so here’s my first step. And I intend to take all the steps following this, because I’m so fed up with my current predicament that I’m desperate just to produce something. Anything. So it’s a good thing I’ve got 2 immediate projects to work on and at least 4-5 secondary ones. I’m going to focus on writing and the new Danwa.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a comfort zone tied up in my bedroom, ready to be violated.
Up, up and away! Towards my dreams and away from fears!
*gets up too quickly, gets dizzy, trips over his own feet and slams head on the corner of his coffee table*
I’m okay! I’m fine, don’t... *gurgle*
liek (mail/url) @ 12/09/2008 - 10:54
Je bent op zoek naar je identiteit. Acceptatie hiervan is de sleutel van je oplossing.
voh (mail/url) @ 12/09/2008 - 14:10
Well, I'm not sure if that's the best way of putting it, but I guess it's at least a part of the whole thing. Since that post I've been quite productive and felt a lot better, arguably because I'm motivated to do stuff rather than just go through the motions of uni and whatever else is 'required' of me (in a way).
I'll be fine, I just need to figure out where my passion is and what it is I really want to do once I finally become a Bachelor of Arts. And I'm fairly sure I will :)
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