30s Funeral

I’ve spent the last ten years of my life circling around dreams, goals, and opportunities like a kid stuck in a revolving door—never quite able to make it through. The fear of failure? It’s been my constant companion, whispering that every wrong turn could mean the end of everything I hope for. So, I’ve waited. And waited. And waited some more.

Indecision isn’t always dramatic. It doesn’t come with fireworks or meaningful monologues. It sneaks up on you, one “maybe tomorrow” at a time. First, it was not applying for that job I knew I could do but convinced myself I was too rusty. Then it was pushing aside the idea of going back to school because what if I wasn’t good enough? Next came the decision to stick with what I knew—no risk, no rejection. But each decision not to decide? That’s where the years disappeared.

The cruelest part is that while I’ve been so busy avoiding failure, I’ve already failed at something much worse: I’ve failed to do anything. The past ten years? A blur of missed chances and untapped potential. All because I was so damn afraid of not being perfect that I paralyzed myself into doing nothing at all.

The ugly truth: not trying is the real failure. It’s the decision that guarantees you’ll never know what could have been, and let me tell you, that’s far more devastating than messing up along the way.

The clock’s ticking, and I’m still standing at the crossroads. Maybe it’s time to take the damn leap, fall flat on my face, and get up again. At least then I’ll know I tried, and I’ll have learned something in the process. The fear of failure might still be there, but I think it’s time to stop letting it swallow another ten years of my life.

It’s not that I have done nothing with my 30’s, it’s that I feel like a failure therefor I get carried away talking about all the ways I lived my life the wrong way (According to who?) (Whom?).