are you afraid of heights?

I have gotten into the bad habit of not blogging these past few years. Not blogging non-fiction, specifically, because I still post my silly sim stories all the time. But here, I’ll begin to write something, and then stop because it sounds stupid, or it’s too short, or it’s too without any point. I funnel a lot of whatever “worthy” thoughts I might have into my fiction or some random poem that nobody will ever see. But as soon as I have deemed an idea important enough to become something valuable, like a poem or a short story, that is also the point at which it is 95% more likely to never see the light of day. Even in the private space of my own quiet blog, I self-censor. You would think that here, of all places, I should say whatever the hell I want to say, relevant or not, long or short or stupid or profound.

I would like to tell myself that to say something, it does not always need to be important. It can just be.

Are you afraid of heights?

I am not generally afraid of heights. Although, when we went to the CN Tower in Toronto this past winter, I could not bring myself to step out onto a reinforced and tested glass panel looking down 1,122 feet. I think I might have for about a second and it made my skin crawl.

Yet I can climb a mountain four times as high and sit on the edge of it for hours with my feet dangling off and be at complete and astounding peace. How does that make sense? Isn’t one thing infinitely safer than the other?

I have been working on a book for four years that has been beta read and edited, received positive feedback, and yet I’m terrified to publish it. On the other hand, every day I publish little bits of fiction on my blog stories that take me no more than a couple of hours to write.

Fears are weird.