A (Blogging) Failure

I've realized any time I have something particularly good or particularly bad happen in my life, my blogging drops off dramatically. Looking back over the past two years of blogging (or lack thereof), that's a lot of ups and downs. Which pretty accurately reflects how I feel about the last two years of my life. The past two years have included crossing the threshold into my 30s, two relationships, two breakups, a trip to Europe, the death of my pawpaw, some pretty intense emotional therapy, moving out on my own after living with roommates for my entire adult life and changing churches. And that's just the big stuff. Countless other small changes and challenges are peppered between those events.

I tend to be pretty hard on myself. I have a twisted mentality that if I mess up on something, the entire thing is a complete failure. So I either have to be perfect at something, or I don't allow myself to do it at all. I know I'm not great at sports, so I don't participate in them at all. Ridiculous, I know. But being mediocre, or even downright bad, at sports is far worse in my messed up mind than not playing sports at all. Avoidance. If you don't try, you can't fail.

I even find myself applying this dubious logic to blogging. If I miss one or two days of blogging, I've failed and should just quit altogether. Never mind the fact that there is no "rule" that I must blog five days a week. There are no blog police monitoring my posting frequency. I'm not going to get shut down for subversive non-blogging. But in the sickness of my mind, it matters.

When I look back over that list of things I've been through in the past two years, I realize how much joy and loss I've experienced in such a short amount of time. I realize how big life really is, even when it seems so small. I realize how I've spent 32 years of my life living by rules that no one else has imposed on me. I realize that my biggest failure is letting the fear of failure dictate my actions. It's time to walk away from that fear. Today. I'm certain it will creep back in. I'm positive I'll succumb to it again at some point in the future. But that doesn't make me a failure.