I was a coward at one point in my life. It was a time that I’m still not proud of and I’m worried I may still have to answer for some of the sins I committed back then.

And we may very well be moving back to the town where I committed them, and it’s got me scared.

Working at the salt mill – I certainly entertained the idea of going back to a high degree!

This all came rushing back at once – I think I had dammed it up a bit when my wife began discussing possible jobs back there and the looming reality that we may soon make the move. I hadn’t felt it until I read this blog post from Ash Ambirge on her The Middle Finger Project blog. It was entitled, “Cowardly Business Owners, An Epidemic?” The post spoke to me because I’ve done some of the very things she discussed, albeit years ago, and I have struggled since to make myself a better and less of a cowardly person. (You’ll now note the name of this blog, Fearless Duck which is closely related to my digital agency’s name, No Coward. Small daily affirmations…)

She talks about those types of people who would commit to something and then either pull out at the very last minute or would do the vanishing act – stop returning calls, drop off social media, etc. I’ve been a culprit of all of these things, although now after all the work I’ve done on my life and the distance I’ve come, it seems like a different life or a different world. Perhaps that’s why I’m so worried to move back there.

When I was in film school, I was a coward.

I was a film student in a small(ish) mountain town back from 2002 to 2006. I graduated with a BA in Media and Theatre Arts with an emphasis on Film. The degree is now a proper Film degree, although I don’t recall the actual name of the degree now. At any rate, this degree required a lot of working with others, and in my time there I worked on over 40 short films from 2 minutes to 10 minutes in length, as well as writing, directing and co-producing my own thesis film in 2006.

During this time I said “yes” to nearly everything that was offered to me. I had been taught that there was nothing I couldn’t do when I put my mind to it, and this is what I believed. Perhaps many go through this similar test and realization at the tender age of 20, but mine was compounded with a crippling desire for people to like me and respect me, fueled by my nearly out-of-control and completely-in-denial-of depression.

I really wanted to be respected in this group after having a rough go of it in high-school where I got exactly what I dreamed of – becoming captain of my high-school varsity soccer team – and being berated and disgraced behind my back about being gay (I’m not gay, although there’s nothing wrong with it) and among other things getting smacked in the face with reality that fulfilling your dreams isn’t always what it’s cracked up to be.

But I digress. That’s probably a different blog post in and of itself. I’ll get back to film schoool…

Basically, I was afraid (a coward) to say “no” when I should have been, because what they don’t tell you when they go on and on about, “you can achieve anything you put your mind to,” is that you have to actually allow for the TIME to do it. I did not and I quickly got myself into trouble with overextending myself. This caused me to lose focus on my own work, I did not do well in my other classes outside of the film program, even those I liked. I had two A’s in my Physics 104 class and two F’s. You can imagine the A’s came earlier and the F’s came later in that particular semester.

There I was, too many project to do and not enough time to do them. At one point I think I didn’t leave my house for three days, missing appointments, shooting dates, class, and other things I had committed to but couldn’t bear to attend. As many who suffer from depression know, the guilt from these missed responsibilities compounds on itself and you begin the spiral into a self-induced, quite frightening depression that is almost impossible to reconcile.

Until you just start back up again (simply leaving the house is a great first step), begin apologizing to everyone and try to reform.

This happened a number of times where I would overextend myself and the cycle would begin again. Each time I learned a little but I also disappointed people, especially because of the reoccurring nature of my problem, and because I wasn’t getting any help.

I did finally get help, and I’ll talk about that in another post later. Perhaps it seems silly, but it was a revelation to me when in therapy I was asked, “what do you think the consequences will be if you actually say, ‘no?'” I honestly didn’t know, I had never done it.

However, I did make some not-quite-enemies but certainly made some bad associations with people – many of whom still live in that town and we may be moving back there. I may have a few tough lunches to schedule and perhaps even money to repay that I’ve left hanging and tried to forget about. I’ll have to do my best to remember, and going back there in my mind isn’t pleasant. I like the 2004 version of myself as little as those who I upset, and he’s a troubling person to revisit.

Hey, thanks for reading this.

Thank you for reading this and if you would like to share/confess your occurrences of being a coward or if you would like to comment about something else, please do so in the comments section below and we can continue this discussion.

Speak to you soon,

JW