To begin I would like to reflect on my belief of fear throughout my life, as children we all typically have something we fear, usually, it’s as simple as “monsters”, snakes, or clowns. In my case, I found myself mainly being afraid of the dark. I remember always dreading heading to my bed or my room, especially nearing nighttime. My mother was kind enough to tuck me in at least once for me to fall asleep. Ironically I love to sleep and still do to this day but I guess it just takes more for me to be able to feel like I can.

So of course I had to find ways to “distract” myself into sleeping since I was finding more and more that I just for the life of me not sleep in a room by myself, especially in the dark. My “distractions” were what was around me at the time which happened to be a TV with cable playing all sorts of shows that absorbed all of my attention. TV at that time set me up for what now is my current taste for shows and movies which are the usual like action, sci-fi, and comedy. But I loved Disney movies most of all at those times since they were extremely colorful and told great stories. Watching TV and playing Nintendo DS during the day and the night were some of the fondest memories I have. It was only when School came that everything for me started to change.

School was extremely difficult for me at the time and even later on since I would want to procrastinate and watch my shows or play games instead of my work. It was a place that made me discover new kinds of fears, especially concerning people around at times. To me, school was something I would rather do than anything else but work every weekday for many months and realistically get nothing out of it in my mind. To me schools are the only positive that it has is it creates a nice social area for everybody around and is almost guaranteed to meet someone who shares similar interests with you. It’s the only reason I am grateful for school now, not more so for the education but for the people I met along the way.

With only school being the most prominent thing in my life I became tired of what seemed to be the massive “cycle” that we call our life in the sense of what was in it. That feeling honestly made me fear that my future will consist of more being tired and upset at the way things are. I didn’t want to live my life like a 9-5 worker or a “normal” life I just wish for my life to be something sweet and something that has consistent things that I know will make me happy for a lifetime but also at the same time have some sort of lasting worth to the world.

Of course, everybody would like to know what they’d like to do for their future which makes me envy the many people who seem to have that luxury already just on their minds. The future for me was fearful to me as well since I tend to feel pressured every time someone asks me something about the future that I am not sure about, especially when it comes to careers since I still am not sure about my passions yet.

During my high school years I recall myself being more eager and on top of myself but slowly stagnated as time went on. Then the pandemic struck which at first made me happy that I would be in school in the comfort of my own home. But later on, as I let time pass to my junior year I started to think to myself that maybe I could have used my time better or achieved more for myself. I started to think that I was living down on my potential since I knew I could do better but I would not pace myself to allow myself to live up to that “potential” due to all this negative thinking.

I am glad to write that I have loved ones that do support me and help me when I feel unsure or scared about something. Having people that genuinely care for you can be a great reminder reassurance that you are not alone.

Now that I am nearing my adulthood and entering my first few weeks of college as corny as it is I want to learn to be with myself a bit more and to of course learn to cope with moving on step by step. This starts with me now believing that going through fear is worth it. Fear to me is a paralyzing and perception-changing feeling. I have always seen myself afraid of certain things but never realized just how much more those things show up, especially in life. I could be afraid of the future all I want but there is no real point to be afraid of it now. Fear, while also usually felt with anxiety can be overcome only if you wish to change how you manage the Fear which would therefore make life easier.

I believe fear is worth it to me because it’s a double-edged sword you either manage it or don’t. Fear is ironically designed to keep you safe just in the most unpleasant feeling way but being able to admit it to yourself and control it bit by bit can make fear part of your strength. I even now feel a bit scared of the length of this paper since I managed to procrastinate a bit with this paper I already had a few potential beliefs I could write about. But I can admit that the first college paper is already a bit of a change of the work in the past. This just tells me that I should expect to write more than what usually expect to write.

I’ll hopefully challenge or make a goal for the next time something is due since it seems the length of certain tasks might have been more than I expected. I also am working a little slow on the materials but hopefully I will get them soon for each class and then I can work on my goal to maintain my grades all semester.