Getting over the fear of failure

If there's one theme for me in the "figuring out shit" chapter in my cancer book, it's getting over my lifelong fear of failure. Listen, I know this is not revolutionary stuff, people. Saying you have a fear of failure is like saying you like the Beatles or pizza. No controversy here. And yet, if I'm going to busy myself looking for personal roadblocks, this one smacks me in the face over & over again.

Pete and I went on the Victoria Art Gallery's House Tour yesterday. I had been looking forward to it for a long time, but got more out of it than realizing that painting your rooms good old white can look fucking awesome. The last house we went to was an artist's home on Old West Saanich Road, overlooking Elk Lake, the ocean and a lovely rural landscape. The rooms in the house were beautiful - all white & stainless steel, artifacts collected from around the world, polished caramel-coloured floors and the most touching prints, paintings and sculptures.

We were promised that the artist herself, Telma Bonet, would be downstairs if we wanted to meet her, and I was so overwhelmed with love for her art that by the time we got to the studio and I saw the petite, middle-aged Argentinian woman lovingly making prints, doing what she loves, I was all verklempt.

Pete chatted with her in his adorable technician's way and I had to bend down to sift through her prints for sale while I wiped away some embarrassing tears. By the time I pulled myself together I had decided to buy a small ink print called "Girl Riding a Horse". The scene looks like something out of a dreamy Isabelle Allende book - a faraway image of the back of a long-haired girl on a horse in the middle of a grassy plain, stopped on a bit of a hill. In other words, nothing to do with me or my life, but I was inexplicably in love.

Pete and I talked on the way home about Telma, about making art and how it's so difficult to get over the fear that no one will care about what you do if you decide to go public. I have this thing about writing. I've loved doing it since I was a girl, but the more books by Atwood, Munro, [insert the names of 300 other authors here] I devour, the less I feel qualified to imagine writing creatively for a living. Like, who do I think I am to be considered in the same profession as these people?

But then, isn't there room for everyone who wants to be in the club? Haven't I just been talking myself out of something instead of just getting over myself and just writing? Indeed.

Thanks, Telma.