Fear -- what are YOU afraid of?

What does "FEAR" mean to you? Here's how Merriam Webster defines our current word:

1: frighten
2: archaic : to feel fear in (oneself)
3: to have a reverential awe of
4: to be afraid of : expect with alarm
intransitive verb: to be afraid or apprehensive
— fear·er noun

When I was a child, I simply could not sleep if the doors to my closet were left open. I would lie in my bed staring into that closet, and in no time the clothes were moving and morphing into terrible monsters. Nothing could convince me that my mind was playing tricks on me. If that door was open, I was afraid to close my eyes. There is a great acronym for fear that fits here:
False
Evidence
Appears
Real
I was so certain that there were things moving in the depths of that open closet that nothing was going to convince me otherwise. Sound familiar?


"To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong." -- Joseph Chilton Pearce

This quote gets to the bottom of one of my biggest problems -- fear of being wrong. Fear of looking foolish. I know that this is a HUGE stumbling block for me. As soon as a photographer -- or any artist -- starts asking themselves if people will like their work, that creative spark is gone. I know this, and yet I still find that I am "self-editing" when I pick up my camera. "Is this stupid? Will (fill in the blank) like this photo? Will it sell?" These are thoughts that are commonly running through my head when I am working on my photos. The last one seems really odd considering the fact that I do not make my living with my photography (at least, not yet). So WHY do I care if something sells or not?

As you think about our current word, really consider what it is that you fear -- and then find a way to show us what that fear looks like.

P.S. There is a great article on fear and creativity here. Check it out.