I’ll be picking up the challenges again soon, but I wanted to examine the reasons I stopped writing. There were three primary drivers, I think:

1. First, as I mentioned in my last post, I expected that I would have changed a great deal by September, and I was discouraged when I realized I wasn’t magically turning into an amazing person just by writing here.

2. I got really angry for a while. I’m not sure if this was from disappointment in myself for procrastinating with writing, or the fact that I didn’t see any positive changes, or just a slight depressive dip. Here’s an email I wrote to myself one night when I was fuming and couldn’t sleep (I have always had bouts of insomnia, so if I find myself lying awake with thoughts running endlessly through my head, I write them down so I can let go of them for a few hours.

I apologize up front for the language, if it’s something you’re not comfortable with. I don’t want to take it out, though, because I think it helps illustrate exactly where I was: stuck, and tantrum-ing at myself. I did redact names and identifying characteristics.

Apparently I fell asleep following this, so…mission accomplished, I guess?

3. And finally, I was talking to someone from an online dating site, and we moved the conversation to email. My email address contains my last name, so I checked to see whether a quick Google would reveal this blog. Eventually, when I enter a serious relationship, someone’s going to know all of these weird things about me, but I am hesitant to have someone read it immediately upon meeting me. I made a conscious choice to be open on the internet, but I still fear that some of this–if all dumped at one moment–could seem really fucked up and cause someone to back away.

My search revealed that the FearKick twitter shows up on the third or fourth page. Most people, when googling another person, probably wouldn’t make it that deep, but it still made me freeze in indecision. And fear. Always fear!

So there you go. Not only did I not change by September, I let fear swamp me so completely that I gave up on a lot–even with an incredible amount of support from my people and near-strangers (thank you, Jordan!). I know that it very easily could happen again, so I’m trying to learn some tactics to stay ahead of it.