June 2021
I am afraid to write.
I am afraid.
I fear that collecting, organizing,
And presenting my thoughts is too daunting.
I fear exposing myself to criticism.
I fear my own criticism.
I fear that my voice will not be compelling.
I worry about cadence.
I worry about flow.
I worry about word placement and tonality.
I worry about the subjective reader.
I fear being wrong.
I fear being right!
I fear making hard stances
Which fail under broader systems of thought.
I fear I have no business writing at all.
Who granted me the authority?
What school, institution, agency?
Might I tell myself that my opinion matters
And believe it?
Aren’t we all competing in the economy of attention?
I fear that my prose will not compare to Proust (it won’t)
or my philosophy to that of Sartre (it certainly won’t)
I fear that I will never play a significant part in dismantling any system
(or in reconstructing one)
I fear that nothing I say will hold relevance
as passages from Thoreau, Baldwin, or Kafka do.
I fear that I will never make anything of writing.
I worry about conveying ideas simply.
I worry about omitting alternate points of view.
I worry about organizational and structural points.
I worry about stating something that has previously been
stated succinctly by someone else.
I fear conflict.
I fear resolution.
I fear my experience and my inexperience.
I desperately fear being drab.
I am afraid to tell stories.
I am afraid not to tell them.
I am afraid for every reason imaginable.
I am afraid for no good reason at all.