I Won’t Let Fear Slow Me Down

This post is as much a pep-talk to myself as it is anything else – but I thought it might resonate with other people out there so I thought I’d put it up here instead of just rambling in my diary.

This world moves so fast. Seriously, with technology and media basically taking over the world, everything happens so quickly. A response is required within the hour, not within the week. You never know what is going to happen next but you can guarantee that at some point you are going to have to drop what you are doing so that this new thing you need to do gets finished in time. It’s crazy.

Working freelance adds another element to this – because your whole lifestyle is on a knife edge at all times.

I am in a bit of a funny place at the moment in regards to that. I find the idea of not knowing where my next pay cheque is coming from really disconcerting. I know I will find a way of making it all work out in the end, but the unknown is so daunting – and you never know what is around the corner.

I fully acknowledge that, with the dreaded “25” looming in the next few weeks, I have a lot of questions about where my life is going and what I’m going to be doing for the rest of my life. I love my job, absolutely love it, but it’s hard. Really hard. When I’m on stage and in a show, I love every second. But as soon as the show finishes, the harsh reality of this career, and the freelance lifestyle hits, which means I need to find a job behind a bar or handing out flyers to pay the rent until the next thing comes in.

There are days when I feel like this life might defeat me. Days when I think, I am an intelligent girl, I could get a “sensible job” and make a real life for myself – get a mortgage and more than 37p in my savings account. Then I get up on stage and realise that it would take so so much for me to give up on this life. It’s part of who I am.

I’ve said it before, (in my post “surely real and relatable blogging is better“) but our online personas often leave us looking much better off than we are. Looking at Instagram and Twitter etc you can come to conclusions about people and their lives without looking beneath the surface. My online persona is looking really peachy right now – on stage every night, having a fantastic time, a designer dressing me for a concert at the London Palladium this weekend (more to follow on this next week!) – and I admit it, I feel very lucky.

But, this time next week, the show will have closed, the concert will be done, and for the first time in a while, I have nothing coming up. I need to get a job. I need to find a flat (anyone know of any rooms going in Clapham, please do let me know!!). And there are moments where this pulls me down, to the point where I want to curl up in a ball with a jar of nutella, unlimited netflix and cry into a pillow.
Moments where I am filled with fear about what is to come – about where I am going to be in 3 weeks, 3 months, 3 years from now. Moments where I think I might just get in my car and drive to my parent’s house so I can turn back into the version of myself I was when I was 17, living the high life, with no worries at all except maybe that I kissed that cute boy in my english class on saturday night and does he really like me?!

But I need to grow up. I need to realise that I am nearly 25. I have responsibilities. I am a “grown-up”, whatever I take that to mean. I can’t run away from it or hide. No matter what I do, this world isn’t going to slow down any time soon. I need to be the determined pain the ass that I can be. I need to make a choice.

Right now, I’m choosing to acknowledge that we are all scared. But, wherever my journey is taking me, I’m not letting fear slow me down.

R xx