You know when you have to push through a big crowd? You want to just close your eyes, clench your fists, and ram right on through, but can't because you need a strategy? Every second spent stalling or calculating the next step you're filled to the brim with anxiety as you eagerly await the next possible moment to thrust yourself forward again? You chance a few glares, a harsh word or two, a stubbed toe, a spilled cup, whatever. And you chance brushing up uncomfortably close to someone along the way? But you gotta keep moving or else you'll be STUCK in a place you don't want to be? You sacrifice some of the fleeting highs that come with stopping to mingle or enjoy all that's abuzz...just for the sake of getting. the. hell. out? Because you feel like you're suffocating? Because you want to be in a space you can call your own and breathe?
I feel like that in life right now. But there is no crowd. There are no people involved. It's just me against a bunch of intangible forces. How unsexy is that.
But in a way ("glass half full" moment coming right up), everyone with a dream or passion to be anything even remotely resembling a dynamo in life SHOULD (ironically) have enochlophobia, or fear of crowds. I read something along these lines somewhere: if you want to lead the orchestra, at one point you have to turn your back on the crowds.
