Mike asked me the other day if I liked horror movies. I mean, I do if they’re good, like anything, but there’s not a part of me that loves to be freaked out and that gets a big kick out of the genre. I love the adrenaline rush of roller coasters, I like standing on the edge of cliffs, I like standing on people’s shoulders and doing new things and meeting new people and being too honest about how I feel and being a beginner. That kind of fear feels like good, clean fear. Healthy fear. Fear that makes you better. Fear of dripping, oozing, lurking, shambling, malevolent monsters feels a little bit…less healthy. Or something.

But there’s more kinds of fear than that. There’s the fear of failure. That one is bad. And then there’s this kind of wordless, nameless anxiety that doesn’t seem associated with anything…and that kind seems interesting.

I was feeling that one tonight as I walked here to the coffee shop. It’s dark out, and it was sunny today but it’s pretty cold tonight. Groups of people are walking about in little clumps between the restaurants and clubs and bars, as they always do in my neighborhood, and tonight when I looked at them they seemed so distant from me, like I was seeing them through a thick pane of glass, or something. I have a lot to do, but it isn’t unmanageable. But when I think about the show, there’s an inexplicable little clutch of panic in my tummy. And when I think about my life, how when I come back from San Francisco I really really have to figure out how to make money again and balance that with the full-time artist thing that I’m not willing to give up, I get another little throb of fear. But it isn’t coming from that, exactly, either. I’m not really afraid of anything specific, and if I think about any one thing that might be making me feel this way, it doesn’t seem fear-worthy at all.

As I walked to Online Coffee, I started to enjoy it a little bit. You know what this is? I decided. This is the letting go, over and over again, of needing to know what I am supposed to do next. This is the fear of jumping into the void, and chances are pretty good it ain’t going to kill me, but I don’t know that. This feeling reminds me of high school. So many things were scary then. But I never felt so alive as then, either.

I don’t want to give the impression that I’m a…a stress junkie, or something. But it feels really good, really satisfying, to turn around and hug this fear, let it engulf me without controlling me. I feel strong tonight. I feel like I’m doing things right. I feel like I don’t know and don’t need to know what comes next. I got some ideas. But I’ll let ‘em go right away if the right weird thing knocks. This is freedom. That’s what it really is.

Love the fright!
Alissa