Things I Fear

Writing Prompt #33

List 15 things you're afraid of. Pick one fear and write about it.

1. Looking stupid

2. Never getting married

3. Not enjoying engineering

4. Getting pulled over (expired tags due to being lazy)

5. Snakes

6. Tarantulas (or big spiders)

7. Bombing a test

8. Commitment

9. Having to dump a girl

10. Not being smart enough

11. Aging

12. Causing injury due to my driving habits

13. Losing

14. Public speaking

15. God

I could talk paragraphs about all of these fears, but I'll just go with my first one - looking stupid. Fear of what other people think of me has always been a big issue for me. Here are a few examples:

Whenever people are dancing, whether it be at a wedding or impromptu, I can assure you I'm nowhere near the action. A few years ago I went to a work sponsored personal mastery seminar out in California. During one of the days, we went out into the redwood forest and did a bunch of fun stuff. But before we did that they played some loud music and made everyone dance to it. There were a lot of other people there like me who had an issue with self-image. But, even though every one of the other ~150 people ended being coaxed into dancing, I just sat there watching. Sad thing is, I don't know if the outcome would be any different today. Though I've always been musical, and have a great sense of rhythm, I don't know how to dance, and therefore feel like I would look stupid.

I rarely ask questions of professors during class. I'm always afraid the question I would ask would be stupid. Since my writing speed is lackluster, I'm often behind the rest of the class. My calculus professor in particular writes down equations much faster than I can, so I'm constantly behind. There was a kid a couple semesters ago in my Calculus I class that asked admittedly stupid questions all the time, so much so that the professor one time said he should be in Algebra and not Calculus. Basically, I never want to end up looking like that.

Since what I've mentioned so far isn't that uncommon, here's something a bit more far-fetched. When I pass up a bunch of cars and then have to make a turn in their lane, if I can tell that I'm not going to be able to get over, instead of slowing down and trying to get in, I'll keep going to the next turn and proceed from there. The reason is that it's embarrassing to slow down and get passed by a lot of the same cars that I'd just passed moments before. This is especially the case when I've been driving aggressively. But it's still pretty lame. (And I don't think I've every shared this before)

The list of inordinate things I do to avoid looking stupid is large. But I think I've shared enough.