Feel The Fear & Do It Anyway. 

10 minutes. That’s the time it took for me to go from dancing around my flat in pure elation, to head in hands on the sofa with an immediate torrent of reasons why I couldn’t possibly attend SCA this October. ‘Lacking’ seemed to be the key player rattling about my brain – whether it was money, talent, or likeability. 

Fast forward a few weeks and I’m writing this SCAB to tell whoever will listen that fear is a bullshit reason to not follow your passions. 

Now, don’t get ahead of yourself. I’m not saying go out there and set up the world’s first Covid-19 kissing booth or publicly declare your undying love for Cummins & Co. I’m talking about the fear that fills your stomach with butterflies. Sneaking a crisp in your history lesson, sending that risky text and instantly throwing your phone across the room, you get the picture. Fear pushes us all forward if we agree to take the plunge. 

Fear, like love, is all consuming & occasionally paralysing. We’ve all walked around a modern art gallery and declared with absolute certainty that we could have created the starring piece. But we didn’t, because we were afraid of the work being rejected or unsuccessful, we dismissed the initial concept as stupid. Whatever the case, fear ruled us out of the running from the get go. Who knows where an idea can take you if you embrace the fear of failure and use it to your advantage. 

To be honest, I am absolutely full of fear when I think about beginning this next chapter of my life. So I should be, my whole life is about to change. In the next few weeks I’ll be clearing out my bank account, leaving a safe job & moving back with my parents. Without this fear, I’d doss around for a year calling myself a creative without ever doing anything creative. I’d leave SCA no better than when I joined and have nothing to show for it. How embarrassing would that be? 

Loads of people have asked me what I want to get out of my time at SCA. It took me a while to realise that it wasn’t the outcome that appealed to me most, the dream placement or the ego boosting award. It was the process. I want to overcome fear and push myself harder than ever before, to be able to take knock backs and criticism with humility and not the typical fearful response to shut down or talk back. 

I’m also really hoping to get an almighty bollocking from Marc at least once. Not for something self destructive like bunking off, but for doing something that makes SCA look dangerous. Something to be feared. I want to throw ideas around and the only response being ‘You can’t do that!’ 

Why not? 

Surely being afraid of something means you’re treading dangerously close to unknown territory, and that is exactly where I want to be.