Insecurities and the fear of success
As I have discussed before, here and here, I am trying to expand my web development business. Among all the challenges that I face; being a full-time mother, having 3 small kids, financial worries of quitting the job I’ve had for the last 6 years… I am finding out that something I thought would bring me a lot of satisfaction and sense of accomplishment is actually freaking me out.
You see, I am almost ready to make my portfolio public. Almost. And as I am nearing completion, I find that I am getting nervous about it, I find that my palms are sweating a little as I write this… yes, it is “that” scary to me. I am discovering that the fear of failure is now very real, I mean, as long as the status of my portfolio is “coming soon”, I cannot technically fail. I didn’t put myself out there yet. I didn’t say “hey world! this is what I’ve done!” yet. I didn’t experience the inevitable criticism of my work yet.
For the past couple months I have been doing a soft launch, if you will, I have been doing development work, and have been slowly showing off my skills, but within communities where I am relatively known and have already established as a comfort zone. I have been working for about a year on my portfolio… well, not exactly working, more like ‘saying’ that I need to work on my portfolio, to some extent, it has been a bit of an excuse for me… “how can people know of me if I don’t market myself”, or “obviously I don’t get many clients, I am still working on my portfolio, silly…”, or “oh mousehunter, can you take care of the kids, I need to work on my portfolio!” 
The impending full launch is making my feel like I will be completely naked to the world, like I will be giving everyone permission to make fun of me… I am telling you, my insecurities are insurmountable.
It is not that I need to be the best, or be seen as that either, and I am certainly not afraid of criticism, I feel that I am just worried about falling flat on my face! I am terrified of putting myself out there and having people poke around, turn up their noses, and walk away, knowing that they can do better. I am totally fearful that someone will notice the ‘tables’ that I am using in my older websites and declare that a developer who does not know about the importance of web standards should not call herself a web professional! Terrified that someone from my past is going to google my name and in 5 minutes discover that this is everything that my professional life has amounted to.
My abnormal trepidation is not because I define myself by what people think, but because I have given up a lot of my dreams and aspirations to become who I am, because my university-self had really big ideas for the future, none of which ever materialized, because I am giving myself an opportunity, and because I don’t know where this path will lead.
I do not want to become overwhelmed to the point where my kids are neglected; I do not want to be once again so consumed with work that I forget about the true purpose of life; but I’d be lying if I said that I do not want to be a success. InshaAllah.
