Change Is Scary

The image above (Obtained from Pinterest) is one of many that you’ll see floating around the net. It’s an image and idea that has stayed with me since I first stumbled across it.

Why? You might wonder, has this idea and image stayed with me?

I guess, it’s because since I learned about it, I’ve felt very strongly that instead of living and leading with my conscious mind, I very much lead with my subconscious mind.

I, more often than not, allow fear and anxiety call the shots in my life and I stay very much inside the boundaries of my “safe zone” so as not to have to deal with my fears and anxieties.

Yes, in the past, I have actively stayed within my “safe zone”, stuck with my normal routines (unhealthy ones, for the most part) and stayed comfortable (there’s that word again), but that meant that I kind of stayed in the same place, I never really progressed forward.

Sure, I got older. I feel like I became a whole lot wiser over the years. I routinely look back on some of the things that I did when I was younger and think – Moron!

To be honest…I was stuck.

Held tight in the same structure and routine that had become an integral part of my life because the thought of treading outside of those safe routines and cyclic patterns of behaviour, unhealthy as they were, was simply unbearable.

The thought of taking steps, active steps, outside of my safe zone and attempt to forge a life that would offer me more contentment than the life I currently had was unfathomable. I would have to battle my anxiety and I do, on a day to day basis.

For so many years, my routine has consisted of waking, having breakfast and then reading (all day and sometimes all night). Yes, I would help my family and friends as needed. For a number of years, I helped my mother with caring for my father, who has now passed, but outside of that, my life mainly consisted of reading.

And I was content…for the most part.

Once every couple of years, I would step outside of my comfort zone and attend a book signing event.

The first time that I attended a book signing event, my first thought was “these are my people”. The comfort, the warmth, the camaraderie and openness, watching strangers become friends, it was an amazing experience and one that has been replicated at every signing event that I’ve been privileged to attend.

It was learning about indie publishing (independent publishing) that gave me that first niggle of discomfort in my former lifepath.

Being a writer, a published author had always been one of those sky-high goals for me, something I dreamed about late at night, but felt was an impossibility – I was very much discouraged from pursuing this life path by a career’s teacher in high school.

Yet, it was a dream that I nonetheless held onto…but I was doing nothing about it.

I was taking no active steps in changing my routines, forging a new lifepath, and really dedicating myself to becoming serious about my writing craft and why?

Because Change Is Scary.

It’s a fearsome thing to battle the monster of the unknown, to confront your anxiety when it’s screaming at you to just go back to the way things were, to go back to where you’re comfortable.

Will I want to crawl back into those familiar, unhealthy routines that saw me spending countless days just reading in bed? Undoubtedly and I imagine there will be a time or two where I do just that.

For now, though, I’m battling my fears by setting up this blogsite, where I can scream into the void, share the highs (and most definitely the lows – I tend to have a lot of them), give voice to the creativity that screams in me and share my progress in my writer’s journey which you can also view through my tiktok, FB and Insta (@kitwyattwritesandreads).

Hope you choose to join me on my journey.

For now.

Cheers,

Kit.