The sad thing is, it’s all about control.

I have figured out one of the main reasons I don’t send my writings to publishers or the like, and it is because I am afraid. Afraid that if I send stuff out and it is accepted, I will end up being pulled out of my cozy little socket and dragged out into the light without the option to retreat any more. My life would gain more momentum than I can control and carry me off into the dreaded unknown whether I wanted it to or not.

And that level of uncontrolled exposure is the worst fear of an agoraphobic slash socially anxious person like myself. Even though on another level, escaping this inane life of mine is what I want the most.

Just on my own terms. And in a way that somehow isn’t scary.

Change without change, freedom without risk, autonomy without separation. It’s all the same impossible dream. No matter how hard we try to dance around the issue, sometimes we have to face the fact that we want two mutually exclusive things, and the only way forward is to choose which onenbsp; to persue…and which one to abandon.

And the thing is, the most likely outcome of sending my stuff out is nothing. If I am lucky, I’ll get rejected in some kind of timely fashion, but otherwise, all that will happen is I will, over a long period of time, gather a collective of rejection emails that proves I am a writer.

Otherwise, very little in my life will change. No runaway train. Not even a skateboard rolling downhill.

So the fear is entirely irrational. Yet it persists. I don’t want to lose control. I just don’t trust the world enough to think I can be safe without remaining in control of the situation. Nor do I have the faith in my ability to cope with things that would let me feel like I can handle whatever comes along.

So I am left with a life I control so hard, little happens in it.

School is a great first step out of that. I have had to expand my comfort zone considerably in order to go back to school, and yet, I am relatively comfortable with it because it’s school, not a job. I have done school before. I’m good at school.

It also provides structure and extrinsic goals. I need those. I can’t generate them myself.

This fear of being torn from my comfort zone and ending up in a situation where I am fully exposed and I have no escape route and I am forced to deal with things in realtime informs a lot of my attitude toward life. It makes me fear novel situations, and cling to the very life I am also eager to escape. I suppose when I am dreaming of escape, of having a life with more content and meaning and purpose, I am not truly imagining myself in the situation. Not realistically. Not with my fears and anxieties entered into the equation. And certainly not with any thought as to how the heck I got there and what steps along the way would be especially scary and difficult for me.

Like (I suspect) many others, I dimly imagine that somehow, I will get to the Moon without passing through space. That all the steps towards my goals will be easy and fun, and that any minute now, I will finally get around to trying, and then, fame!

After all, I am just so darn talented, how could anyone resist? No need to prove that by sending stuff out. I’ll just sit back an enjoy the feeling that I am totally going to succeed some day in the future without feeling any pressure to take any of the steps that would actually lead to that happening.

Those steps are hard. And scary. And I might lose the comfort of entirely unearned ego and faith in my own specialness.

Well, not entirely unearned. That’s another good thing about school, I am getting some much needed positive feedback. People in my creative writing class, including the professor, seem genuinely amazed by my writing. So I guess writing a thousand words a day for five years or more, plus the million words, plus a novel a year, has done me some good.

Keep at anything for long enough and you’ll get good at it. I should apply that to more areas of my life.

As for my other forms of brilliance, those depend on how well I do on my two exams. I am totally viewing them as tests of whether I am still the academic whiz I used to be, who just naturally remembers enough from class to get good marks on the test without having to study at all.

Like I have said before, I am kind of hoping the answer is no. It would give me something to strive for. If I get those exams back and find out I got my usual 80-90 percent like usual, part of me will be genuinely disappointed.

And I have to admit, I have this fantasy that, somehow, just by showing up and showing off how gosh darn smart I am, some grownup (ha) in the hierarchy of Kwantlen (the education mill) will recognize my talents and take me under their wing, or at least take it on themselves to offer me some solid guidance.

This does not seem likely, true. After all, it’s never happened before. Presumably, this is because I am brilliant but somewhat unpleasant to deal with, and it’s easier just to ignore me than to deal with my strange thoughts and clueless challenges to their authority and general oddness.

I am still that big dumb clumsy dog who everyone loves but nobody actually wants around because it’s just too stressful.

But I am trying my best to be a better dog. Easier to handle. Better housetrained. Less likely to break your fine china.

Maybe then, I will be able to find somehow to take me in.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.