fear stops you from living, not from failure.

a call to not let fear stop you from living your life out loud.

I’ve always been someone who took the road less traveled.

Always tried new things, been brave, applied for opportunities that may or may not work out, and taken the leap to do something I believe in, even before the path revealed itself to me.

Lately, though, I’ve been feeling stagnant and simultaneously overwhelmed about where I’m going. I feel like I’ve found myself locked in these crazy thought spirals, doing nothing but overthinking what the “right” decision is. Whether or not I’m on the “right” path. Trying to overanalyze every single move I make to optimize for the best possible outcome, and it’s been driving me crazy. The more I try to avoid mistakes, failure, and slip-ups, the more my life passes me by, and I stay stagnant because my fear keeps me paralyzed.

I’ve been asking for clarity, for guidance. Been asking for signs. But I’ve neglected to pay attention to one of the biggest signs that’s been there all along, and it’s the acknowledgement of who I am and who I’ve been up until now. Somewhere along the way in the frenzy of moving back in with my parents, trying to build my savings, and decide what I want my next life move to be, I have found myself at a crossroads of absolute decision paralysis. Instead of moving forward by making hard decisions and going out on faith knowing that everything will work out, I’ve been trying to avoid everything all together.

Avoiding moving because I feel like I’m not ready yet- which is steeped in my fear of the future and all of the unknown factors that come with having a full-time job in tech in the great ‘ole year of 2026. Avoiding traveling as much as I was because I’m constantly spiraling about everything going on in the world. Bringing my fear into my apartment hunting process by doom-spiraling about the layout not being safe enough in the event that someone breaks in. The short of it? I’m trippin’.

Why, on earth, am I accounting for every potential outcome EXCEPT for the good ones?

All of the ways that things could work out. All of the paths that don’t lead to destruction. To mayhem. To chaos. Somewhere along the way, I’ve let fear too far into my house. Too far into my life. Into my dreams and my hope. It’s created a rift between me and myself. The person that I know I am, the person I know I can be, and the person that’s gotten me here. She would never think about all this. She would live her life putting one step in front of the other, trusting that even if she can’t see ahead of her, the steps will appear right when she needs them.

It’s crazy to me that this shift has even happened because of the life I’ve lived. I’m the girl who didn’t get ONE internship before graduating college and still landed an incredible corporate job within 7 months of graduation, which then led to me working at some of the most influential companies in my career. I’m the girl who moved back in with my parents for a couple of months during the beginning of the pandemic and then went out on a crazy limb and moved all the way to Austin, Texas, without knowing ANYONE, and spent an entire 2 years there building a beautiful life. I’m the girl who decided in the span of 3 weeks to leave my entire life behind in NYC and work and live abroad for a summer - something I wasn’t sure was even possible before I started making the moves to make it happen.

I’m the girl who has traversed multiple new countries and cities alone, from London to Barcelona to Dublin to Paris- more than I can count. I am NOT someone who is afraid of life. My entire life has been full of moments where I wanted to be whimsical, brave, and disruptive- and I did just that without hesitation.

And somehow here I am, sitting on my laurels in my hometown waiting for some big mysterious thing to fall out of the sky to be a catalyst for me to live the life I’m itching to live. It’s insane. Somewhere along the way, I forgot I have free will. I forgot who I was. I forgot that I’m the girl who can do anything. Anytime. Any dream I have can be created in the palm of my hands but first I have to believe its’s so. And that’s the part I need to remember.

So I’m doing the work of remembering.

I restarted therapy to talk through my fears and to have someone else there who can remind me that sometimes it’s really just all in my head. I’m touring apartments to relight the fire in me to move. I booked my flights to Hawaii, and I’m going to book the rest of my month-long birthday trip to Asia next week instead of letting all of the “what-ifs” stop me from exploring the world, which is one of the things that lights the biggest fire in me, one of the things that keeps me going. I’m going on a hiking trip with one of my best friends to get back into nature and reconnect with the fearless parts of me.

There’s a lot going on right now.

I don’t discount that. Between everyone’s personal lives, the global economy, the job market, and seasonal depression. It’s all extremely difficult to push through, and it can seem so much simpler to dissolve yourself into the horrors and just let your life pass you by. But we can’t account for all of the unknowns. We can’t wait to live our lives until everything is going right, perfect, or we feel comfortable. The moments that scare us, the moments that get us innovating for solutions, picking ourselves up off the ground, correcting mistakes- those are the moments we blossom. Those are the times we grow the most, the times we prove to ourselves that we can conquer anything that we put our minds to and can trust ourselves to handle any curveballs that come our way. Because that’s life. Just when you think you’ve figured it all out, when everything seems to fall in line, when you feel secure- those are the moments that everything could fall apart, and then what? You spent all that time trying to prepare for every variable, and everything falls apart anyway.

Life is about the moments that surprise you.

The times you didn’t think everything would work out, and it did. The spontaneous trips, the mistakes you made that led you to growth, and the irresponsible decisions that ended up being the best thing for you at that time. All of the small decisions that make up your everyday life. All of the big decisions that change your life.

And you can’t spend so much time thinking about the route that you forget to remind yourself that the best part is just holding on and experiencing the ride.