New Year, New Fear
Do you fear the future or are you just scared to fail?
Now that it’s a new year, what are you going to do with your life?
“Eat healthier.”
“Workout more.”
“Open a business.”
“Write a book.”
The answers come in droves, don’t they? People know exactly what they have to do, but only 9% of Americans actually go through with it.
One could argue that the lack of success in an American’s resolution is directly correlated to our busy lifestyle. If John Carpenter’s They Live (1988) is anything to go by, the system wants us to “WORK 8 HOURS, SLEEP 8 HOURS, PLAY 8 HOURS.”
But maybe there’s something else going on.
From the 1st through the 25th of the December, we celebrate with colorful lights and hearty feasts. Family is together, we sing carols and drink hot chocolate, we decorate our houses with gay apparel. But after the 25th, a darkness looms over our shoulders.
The lights come down, the wrapping paper is tossed, and the hot chocolate is replaced with a boozy concoction for the 31st. The holidays came, we have new goodies to be happy about, but the darkness still looms in the corner.
It’s a very sneaky and sinister bastard, that darkness is. It stays constant in our lives, yet it doesn’t fully show itself until after the holidays. Perhaps it takes glee in waiting, watching us squirm throughout the year.
Every time it hears another complaint about the year, another plea for the time to pass, another prayer for the clock to go backwards… it celebrates. It feeds off our weakness, growing stronger in each pathetic whine we give. Our desperation is its fuel, and our fear of this desperation is its joy.
And then, while we attend our drunken New Year’s Eve parties, it strikes. It attacks exactly at midnight, when the ball drops in New York City, with Ryan-fucking-Seacrest of all people. It shows itself to us, mighty and tall, large and immovable.
A dark abyss, mysterious to us all. The only way to describe it is the likes of the shadow in your room when you’re trying to sleep, somehow being both intriguing and disturbing all at once.
The new year. The future.
It’s finally here.
Fear of the Future
Maybe the lack of success that comes with New Year’s Resolutions is something as simple as being scared of the future. After all, it’s unknown to us. It’s foreign, alien even, and we simply have to survive it.
We know that the fear of the unknown is what makes any horror story. Humans don’t like what they don’t know — it scares us, makes us feel weird. It’s why the idea of dying terrifies so many people. We don’t know what it’s like. We don’t know what death has in store for us.
If that’s the case, maybe that’s why so many people give up on their New Year’s goals. They’re scared of what may happen, or what may not happen, and don’t even think it’s worth it anymore.
And maybe you’re about to give up on this newsletter too. You’re probably thinking: “What does any of this have to do with horror? Why should I care?”
True, I usually speak about more fictionalized pieces of terror. But this horror is more grounded in reality, because real life is sometimes scarier than any movie could ever be.
There are no men in masks. There are no ghosts in hallways. There certainly aren’t any giant monsters destroying cities.
There is only you and the unknown to come. The new year, the future, the darkness. I’m writing this newsletter because it is scary to be the only flame, flickering through the dark and trying to find your way.
You begin to doubt yourself, be uncertain of your abilities, and lose hope in what you can actually do. You blame it on the lack of knowledge you have for the future.
We both know that’s a lie.
The Fear of Failure
It’s the idea of failing that gets you.
What if your goal doesn’t work out? What if you don’t get those abs? What if you continue to eat junk? What if you never finish that book? What if you never start a business? What if you don’t land a new job?
What if you can’t keep going?
I like to think of our brains like filing cabinets (maybe because that’s how SpongeBob showed it to me as a kid). Each cabinet has its own category: memories, creative ideas, goals, etc. But there’s one cabinet that is overflowing. Nobody ever purges it or shreds any documents because it’ll just overflow again by next week.
It’s the “what if” cabinet, filled with our anxieties and tearful thoughts we try to keep hidden from others. We hide them well, but they’re open for everybody to see inside our mind.
There’s probably one “what if” that has hundreds of folders under it.
“What if I fail?”
Does that look familiar?
“What if I fail?”
Something we’ve probably all said before. But in our minds, it begins to repeat itself, so much so that the words begin to twist into a sounds that don’t even sound real.
“What if I fail? What if I fail? What if I fail? What if I fail? What if I fail? W̸̨̡̝͙̞͔̭͚̮̮̳̞̖̔̌̏̀̅̃͊̏̓̋̓͂͆ḧ̶̘̝̯͇̙̥̌͐̅̈́͆̈́ą̵̄̾͒̍̽̈́̄̉̐͌͘͘̚͘͠t̵̢̳̫͕̱̤͙̦͎͓̽̊̒̑͐̑̓̎̽̋ ̴̡̛̣̻̻̩̱̹̗̼͖̳̆̑͆ĩ̴̢̩̲̮̣̟́̄͊̌̾̓͌̅͠͝͠f̵̧̬̥̟̼͊͌̈́͌͋͆͂̃ ̷̺̳̩̟̱̪̤͕͓͙̂̌I̸̡̨̨͇̝̤̤̳̦̱̞͎̻͚̜͐̿͒͐́̿͋̒̆̍̈͌̎̋ ̴̡̢̦̘͓͖͓̖̱͇̤͍̑̀̏͛́f̸̡̻̬̩̄ͅa̸̲̫̗̭̅̄́̉̀̊͘ĩ̶̢̗͍͎̮͎̮̦͚̳͕͈͖̥̑̅̅͒̎̑͜͝l̶̨̥̝̦̬͇̪̉͋̇̒?̴̤̙͖͐ “
Failure hurts.
That’s a simple fact. It hurts to fail, even if that failure teaches us something later down the line.
So, let’s be vulnerable for a second. Be mindful, because this might be the only time I open up and do some mushy-gushy stuff. After this, it’s blood and guts and horror. I can’t promise another time like this. Maybe. I don’t know. We’ll see, 2024 is a new year, after all.
Failure is very scary to me. It’s the reason I tend to procrastinate so much or why I’m a perfectionist when it comes to my art.
I blame it on being a “gifted child” in school, because people tend to blame it on that, I think. In school, I never really had to try to get good grades. I flew by most my classes other than honors calculus, but that’s because I’m not very good at math, and I still don’t know why I was in that class to begin with.
By college, assignments become a little more difficult, but it was still relatively easy. I wrote my essays and stories, got pretty damn good grades, and managed to get my degree.
It wasn’t until I started working my first jobs that I began to feel the whole “what if I fail?” thing. There I was, hopping from job-to-job in the retail space.
I remember standing at the register at Bed Bath & Beyond (yeah, before they went bankrupt), waiting for a customer to come in. Most days, it would be hours before I got my first customer of the day to ring out. It was a dead store, ghastly even, lit with sickening fluorescent lights and filled with overpriced bedspreads. I knew it would be closing down before any news ever broke out about it, certainly before the devastating news about how the people were affected too.
But everyone else there worked as if they were oblivious to the very obvious and glaring fact of how empty the store was. While I stood at the register, bored out of my mind, I often felt like I was wasting my time there. Why was I at a store that nobody shopped at, doing nothing, when I could be at home being productive?
And then I would feel like I was going crazy, because I seemed to be the only one noticing the decline in the Bed Bath & Beyond brand. I remember speaking with a co-worker one time, talking about stores that had gone out of business.
“I’m pretty sure this place is next,” I said.
“Really? I don’t think so. I still think it has a few years,” my co-worker replied.
That was 2021. They filed for bankruptcy on April 23, 2023. Now they’re trying to reinvent themselves as an online only store.
I felt guilty about the monotony of working there.
I felt like my time was robbed of me. It would be different if I were actually doing something, but I was just standing there, because the oxygen certainly couldn’t buy an overpriced milk frother like a person could.
I did everything right. I graduated high school, I got a college degree, I gained valuable skills. Yet there I was, working at a dying retail store that once thrived in the 2000s. That was almost disheartening to think about: Bed Bath & Beyond did everything right, they thrived, and now they’re dead.
Nobody cares about Bed Bath & Beyond anymore. Their legacy will forever be tied with an Adam Sandler movie.
Oh my god. What if I fail?
By the middle of that year I got another job, this time in an office with better pay. It was okay for a little while, but when I moved departments it became even more monotonous. I would get everything done quickly, because it was rather easy work, and then I would have nothing to do.
Nothing.
8 hours of nothing.
The idea of failing my younger self began to invade my mind. What if I already failed? What if I never get to do what I want to do? What if, for the rest of my life, I sit at a desk doing meaningless work? Sitting at that desk, eroding, until I end up in a body bag.
I recall drinking with my friend one night, tipsy as hell and trying to wash away the regrets of my horrid work life. I don’t remember how we began talking about it, but at one point, I started venting my frustrations about everything.
When I was done, my friend looked at me as if I were crazy. I didn’t understand it at the time. I was angry, upset, lost… I was a failure in my mind. I was terrified that my life would be the same cycle of fear every day.
“You’re literally 22,” she said to me. She grabbed my hand and laughed. “You are the most accomplished person I know at our age.”
What did that mean?
“Your favorite band follows you. Someone got your art tattooed on them. You’ve won some awards. Pretty big accounts have reposted your art.” I remember she had a very sincere look in her eyes that night. She wasn’t just telling me what I wanted to hear — she was serious about what she was saying. “If you did all that now, you’re only going to do better later.”
That stuck with me.
It almost… kicked the fear of failure right out of my mouth. The irony taste of blood from my doubts still remained, but the idea of settling or feeling as if I wouldn’t go anywhere left.
Failure was no longer an option for me, as cheesy as that sounds.
And I think that worked.
I started working out regularly, I started doing more with my art… and I started this newsletter. I got to go to conventions in 2023, meet my best friend from online in 2023, meet one of my favorite singers in 2023!
I got to be apart of an awesome horror-loving community on Substack through Macabre Monday, and my newsletter has finally began its first stages of growth.
So, yeah, failure is scary. And while this isn’t the traditional post I usually do here, I felt it was important to voice my gratitude and growth. 2023 was an interesting year, but I think 2024 will be the year of better tomorrows for me. Again, cheesy, I know, but I really do believe this newsletter will continue to reach the right people.
I just want to talk about horror with cool people. I like having a community, and I think almost everybody can agree with that.
So… next week will be our regularly scheduled programming about slashers and spirits. Thanks for 2023, here’s to 2024.