Are you there fun? It's me, Betsy

Fear is a pretty useless emotion if you think about it. Sure, sometimes a little fear does keep me out of trouble or from getting hurt, but does it also keep me from living? I realized last night that I say “no” to a lot of things just because I am scared of what could happen. I mean seriously, I am only 20 years old and already there are things I look back on not doing with regret.

Some of my friends and I were talking last night about things we were scared of and I figured out that one of my biggest fears is getting old and looking back on my life and being disappointed. Like I said there are already things that worry made me miss out on, so I have decided to make more of an effort to relax, take chances, and do stupid spontaneous stuff while I have the chance. I really want to start trying to live life to the fullest and not worry so much about the rules, all the little things that could happen. I am about to start my junior year in college, isn’t now the time to have fun and do crazy, fun things. I can feel my “time to be a carefree (ish) young adult” starting to wind down and I refuse to let my college years slip by without having a little irresponsible fun along the way.

*So last night I was invited to go do something that I would usually say “no” to. When my friend asked me if I wanted to go all my usual paranoid questions popped into my head. “What if someone gets hurt?”, “What if I get hurt?” “What if we get in trouble”. Then I realized the chances of someone getting hurt were slim and we probably were not going to get into trouble so I decided to go (even though I was scared) and I loved every minute. Now I have a very memorable night with a group of friends that I love, and even if we did get into a little bit of trouble, there is no one I would rather be with… what a great story.

Even though I did not do anything really crazy or life changing last night, it’s a start. So who ever is reading this I am asking you help me to not be so fearful of things. If I start to back out of something for stupid reasons, point it out to me and encourage me to live the life out of every day.

* If you want to know the whole story of last night just ask me.