I’ve been swirling around in a cyclone of surrealism, overwhelmed and desperate to find a place to rest my longing hands.
In five days, I’m going to be entering a town that, for the last six years, has lived in only my dreams. Immortality Awaits is, at the core, a fantasy in a world I created, but I was naive to think I could write about a real town and not ever actually go there. Lowell, Massachusetts, where the book spends its first fifty pages, seemed like a perfect filler town while I created a world around it, but the time has come at last for me to visit and put the final touches on my book.
And I’m terrified.
It’s all about the mentality, though. Those who try, do, and those who don’t, fail. This is a trip I’ve been avoiding since I started writing the novel, because making the town a real experience in my life is the same as finalizing something that originally started as a summer project.
I’ve been putting off truly addressing how I feel about this trip, mostly because I’m afraid to jinx anything. Heading to a frozen town on the East Coast in the middle of January is just short of psychotic, but the timing of everything seems to finally be working out. But an even mixture of fear and excitement float within me, constantly battling to overtake my thoughts and prove victorious. Is this trip worth it? What if it doesn’t go as I thought it would and I come back disappointed? What if…
So many questions flood my mind, threatening to damper my spirit. But fear…fear is good. Fear is an emotion that only presents itself at the time of greatest need. When you know something you want is right there. Fear acts as a rationalizer, if used correctly. To hold someone back, if allowed, or to possess the bearer with a newfound strength, therefore enabling the victim to discover a new faith within themselves hidden in their deepest depths, and allowing them to piece themselves together to become the person they were destined to be.
Yet destiny is just as tricky as fear, because destiny lies in the future. And while God may know what’s to come, we do not. And yet, is that bad? Wrong? If I knew the outcome of my trip for my book, the outcome of my life and everything I have worked so hard for, would I change anything in my course to get there? Or would I follow blindly, knowing the outcome and yet riding on the excitement of the journey?
Is that not what life is? A journey given to us, a path laid out with numerous challenges and obstacles? But in the deepest possible reflection of life up until the present, one finds the path was always clear. All of the little things we ignore, all of the questions answered right in front of us and yet…we follow. We live. We go on, knowing the past has molded us, but forcing ourselves to look hopefully into the future. Good and bad is not as clearly definable as black and white, and an appreciation of our trials and tribulations is necessary in order to grow.
And if you’re still alive, what are you so afraid of? All of the obstacles overcome are to be praised, to encourage you to know what you’re capable of. The obstacles get harder, because one doesn’t need to learn lessons over and over. Once the lesson is learned, it’s a chapter to close.
Fear is something to be captured, to use and turn into adrenaline, to give you the will to go on. If there’s anything you’re afraid of…anything that’s holding you back…grab the bull by the horns and show life what you’re capable of.
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Cover image found at: http://www.maryvillevineyard.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/Fear.jpg
Andrew J. Stillman | The Artist Mindset 
Do not accept any invitations that involve the ghost of Jack Kerouac and an abandoned canal lock.
Muahahah I will try my hardest!
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