Born to Make

September 9, 2025

Throughout my creative life I’ve battled with sharing my work with others. Various fears held me back, the most prominent of which were fear of failure, fear of ridicule, and even, at some points, fear of success. In a song, I once wrote:

Not sure which is greater, my fear of failure, or fear of success; they render me helpless; out of control.

I was acutely aware of the massive hindrance they presented, but could never figure out how to overcome them.

I wrote the lyrics above close to two decades ago, but only a few days ago did the thought occur to me, while the lyrics revisited (as they often do), that the fear of success has actually just been the fear of failure in another guise. I wasn’t afraid of good things happening, I was afraid of the expectation that comes with a hit, or the inevitable descent, which for some can happen quite rapidly. I was afraid of the decay. I was afraid of failing to maintain the high, and live up to whatever had got me to that point in the first place.

Of course, I was afraid of everything before success too, and to a much greater degree. I was afraid of the judgement, the potential ridicule (as I experienced frequently as a child). I was afraid of the rejection, and being wrong. I was afraid of being seen and heard because if I was noticed I might become a target. All of this, I’d wrapped up, consolidated and labeled as a fear of failure, and it was crippling. I made good music, but it never really saw the light of day, because I was too afraid to really put myself out there.

15 years into software development and all the same fears have been holding me back. I’m not a “genius” software engineer, but I’m capable and I’m creative. I have ideas, and I have a great time breathing life into them. But I get stuck. When it’s time to share what I’ve created I’m suddenly gripped by some kind of paralysis. I thought it was fear of failure. But it suddenly occurred to me today:

What if the fear of failure isn’t the real fear? What if the real fear is Death? What if all my fears are just some manifestation of the fear of death?

I can’t even tell you how this occurred to me. It was one of those spontaneous thoughts that just kind of materialised. Of course it didn’t just materialise. I’ve been ruminating on my fears for decades, trying to get to the heart of them, unravel their secrets.

For example, during one such unraveling, about a decade ago, I realised that a lingering fear around not being valued was mostly ego. I was fixated on others giving me, my life, and my efforts value. But I came to the conclusion that this is ridiculous, because all life has value. Simply by being, I have value, so to fear not having any is absurd. The real problem was the need for proof of value through others. The whole episode had quite a profound effect on me.

Peeling back the fear of failure, along with all the others, to find the fear of death lurking beneath it all… It feels like the unraveling that happened all those years ago. It feels significant, worthy of reflection, contemplation. It was compelling enough to make me stop and record my thoughts about it, which I’ve not really done for anything other than technology in quite some time.

The fear of death

When I was a child, I must have died a thousand times. Every time I was ridiculed, whatever idea I had of who I was, or wanted to be, got cut down, savagely. The ideas of who I might be can live on in my mind if I never present them on the cold stage of reality. But once I put myself out there, they’re vulnerable to being cut down like the dreams of my childhood.

The more I think about the fears that have been holding me back, the more apparent it seems that they are all branches of the same root fear. No, it’s not literal death, in most cases, but it is death of some kind:

My ego is trying in every way possible to keep these concepts alive, despite the irrationality of it. If I cling to the imaginary, there’s no chance of achieving any of the type of success I’d like in reality. But if I let go of the imaginary and “risk” the ridicule and disappointment, there’s some chance, even if just a little.

Perhaps this is the same irrationality that holds many of us back. We protect imaginary futures instead of creating real ones. We guard potential selves that exist only in our minds rather than risk them dying through action.

But now that I’ve seen it, I can’t unsee it.

And it’s not that it’s necessarily even correct. Right or wrong, that’s not the point. The point is that it’s another lens through which to see and understand my own fears. It makes me want to completely flip it and turn it inside out. Like, I can call it out now, when I see it rearing its head in any of its guises.

I can stop and remind myself to take this moment as an opportunity; for discovery; for learning; to experience surprise; to make a connection; to make a mistake that might reveal something useful. In other words, to be open to and create space for an experience that won’t be had by hiding away in the safety of my ego’s fantasies.

I’m naturally in this life for the exploration, manifestation and creation. I’ve always been creative, for as long as I can remember. And I must remember. This fear of death doesn’t have to keep holding me back, not if I can keep reminding myself that I was born to make.

Born to make.

It feels empowering. I even feel a little excitement when I let the words hit home. The fear dissipates a little. I don’t expect fear to disappear. Some fear is healthy, and definitely natural. But it should protect, not stifle. I’ve let it hold me back long enough.

Born to make means choosing creation over protection. It means risking the death of imaginary possibilities to birth real ones. It means accepting that some ideas will die so that others can live.

Where do I go from here?

I don’t know yet. But for the first time in a long time, that feels like an opportunity rather than a problem.