Journal Entry #30: Fear

Date: November 28, 2007
Time: 23:33

I'm not a fan of Woody Allen, but he said something once that I tend to agree with. He said, "I don't want to achieve immortality through my work, I want to achieve it by not dying."

Some semesters ago, I had to write a research paper for ENGL135. I got it written, and I used myself as a couple of examples. Oh, I wrote about fears and phobias.

I fear rejection, in fact, I have an almost paralyzing fear of it. I say "almost paralyzing fear" because up until I submitted one of my stories for publication, I had a "paralyzing fear" of rejection. There is a phrase people tend to throw about whenever someone is afraid to say something to someone else, for instance, asking your boss for a raise. The phrase is "What's the worst that could happen? So they say 'No'."

Um, excuse me, but, for someone who fears rejection to the extent that I do, being told 'No', is the worst that could happen. Being told 'No' is devastating to me. Even when I submitted my stories to be copyrighted, there was always the possibility that someone else could have written something similar enough for me to be rejected. Like my story entitled "The Family of Man", all while I was writing it, I kept thinking and saying to myself, "I've read this before." or "I know I've read this", or "I know I've seen this before."

And then, one day, I got an envelope from the US Copyright Office. It was thin enough for them to have mailed that story back to me. But when I opened it up, it turned out there was a slight problem with another submission. It seems I had gotten too technical when I listed what I had written and/or created in regards to the story.

I can hear you saying, "See? You were worried over nothing." It is not nothing, to me, it is everything. Now, sooner or later, I'll probably submit another story for publication, but it's going to take a while.

For anyone who might be interested in reading my research paper, here is the link,

http://www.geocities.com/lyoskowitz/My_Research_Paper.html

It is within that paper where you can read of my other fear.