KINGDOM OF FEAR

(Or: how I’m learning to feel things while hurtling through space at 1,000 mph)

I’m going to start with something wildly unhelpful…

I don’t have the answers.

Not the clean, confident, “here’s what I’ve learned” kind. Not the inspirational quote you screenshot and pretend you’ll live by tomorrow. None of that. If anything, I feel like I’ve spent the last year collecting more questions than answers and then just… carrying them around like emotional carry-on luggage I refuse to check.

And for a while, I got very good at keeping everything internal.

Not in a dramatic way. No journaling on a mountain at sunrise or whispering affirmations into the ocean. Just quietly stacking thoughts, brushing feelings aside, and telling myself, “Yeah, I’ll deal with that later,” like later was some kind of organized, well-lit room I could walk into when I felt ready.

Spoiler: later is a myth. Later is just now, wearing a fake mustache.

But recently, something’s been shifting.

And I don’t mean a full life overhaul. I’m not waking up at 5 a.m. drinking celery water and becoming a new man. It’s subtler than that.

It’s more like… I’ll be driving, a song comes on, and suddenly I’m having a small, unexpected cry like my body found a file I forgot to delete.

Not a breakdown. Not a full emotional collapse.

Just a quiet little “hey… this is still in here.”

And weirdly, it feels… good.

Not “I love crying in traffic” good, but more like something is finally moving again. Like emotional circulation has returned after being cut off for a while.

There’s a song by Cameron Whitcomb that talks about burying feelings and then choosing not to, and that line hit me harder than I expected. Because I realized I’ve been doing exactly that. Not ignoring things completely, just… postponing them indefinitely like they’re an email I don’t want to open.

Here’s the part that matters though.

Under all of that, I’m still scared.

Like, genuinely scared.

Not just of failing in some dramatic, lose-everything way, but of what happens if I actually push a little harder. What happens if I stop holding back, stop managing how I’m perceived, and just lean into whatever this whole thing is supposed to be?

Because that’s where it gets uncomfortable.

What happens if I try and it doesn’t work?

What happens if I feel everything and it’s… a lot?

What happens if I actually become the person I keep saying I want to be?

That last one is weirdly the scariest.

And the fear isn’t occasional. It’s daily.

It’s there when I think about doing more, being more, risking more. It’s there when I catch myself caring too much about what other people think, even though logically I know that most people are too busy worrying about their own lives to analyze mine.

Which brings me to my favorite ridiculous realization lately.

We are literally standing on a giant spinning rock, moving at about 1,000 miles per hour at the equator, flying through space, held together by forces most of us couldn’t explain if our lives depended on it… and somehow, in the middle of all that, we’re worried about whether someone judges our shoes or what our job title means to them.

It’s insane.

Beautiful. But insane.

People who are not living your life, not feeling your fears, not carrying your thoughts… somehow get a front-row seat in your decision-making process.

They don’t.

Or at least, they shouldn’t.

They can kick rocks. Gently. Or not that gently. Dealer’s choice.

Because if fear is already part of the deal, if it’s sitting there with me every day whether I like it or not, then maybe the goal isn’t to get rid of it.

Maybe it’s to stop treating it like a stop sign and start treating it like a sign that something actually matters.

Fear doesn’t show up for things you don’t care about. It shows up right before something real. Something uncomfortable. Something that might actually move your life in a different direction.

So instead of trying to shut it down, I’m experimenting with something new.

I’m trying to feel it.

All of it.

The fear, the emotion, the vulnerability, the random moments where a song hits too hard or someone tells a story and you feel it in your chest like it happened to you.

I want the goosebumps. I want the lump in my throat. I want to care more than is considered cool, because honestly, being “cool” usually just means being slightly detached and emotionally unavailable, and I’ve tried that. It’s boring.

The alternative is being numb.

And numb is efficient. Numb gets things done. Numb looks like you’ve got it all together.

But numb doesn’t feel like anything.

And I think I’m done with that.

So yeah, I’m still scared.

Probably will be tomorrow too.

But I’m starting to think that fear isn’t something to avoid or hide from. It’s just part of being awake to what’s actually happening around you and inside you.

New mantra, if I had to pick one:

Don’t run from it. Feel it.

Not perfectly. Not bravely every time. Just honestly.

Because if we’re all out here spinning through space, defying logic and gravity and common sense… I’m not going to spend that time pretending I’ve got everything figured out or shrinking myself to fit into someone else’s expectations.

I don’t.

You probably don’t either.

And for the first time in a while, that doesn’t feel like a problem.

It feels like a starting point.