“I haven’t been this scared since the night before I drove out on the BlissQuest,” I said. “That night I was in a sleeping bag on a hardwood floor in my bare apartment, thinking, “What the hell am I doing?””

And Jessica said, “Good. You should be scared, it’s good for you. You should do something every day that scares you. It’s how you know you’re living.”

Her statement was so matter-of-fact. So resonant.

“And the BlissQuest turned out fine, right?” she continued. “That fear and adventure prepared you to be able to do this.”

That adventure prepared me for this. Maybe so. The constant, daily uncertainty and power of personal choice. Each morning that I woke up on the BlissQuest I was able to ask myself, “What city do I want to see today? Which scenic route do I want to take? Which music in the stereo and highway and fruit stand and so on and so on.

And it was scary at first. Terrifying. Not because I thought I might get hurt or lost – but because I worried I was making a tremendous mistake with each choice I made. Something the direction of my life would never recover from.

And to put it in perspective, this new adventure is just a book. Just a self-published, low budget, piece of artistic storytelling.

It’s not a year on the road, sleeping in my jeep and cheap hotels and taking the back roads to places unknown. It’s not a lightning storm in the Petrified Forest with the top off the car, or a night in a Seattle cemetery full of ghosts.

It’s just a silly book.

I’m not risking my safety or personal security. I’m only on the hook for money and a sense of accomplishment.

So if the stakes are so much lower, why is the fear so disproportionately high?

The similarity is in the worry I stated earlier. I worried I was making a choices that the direction of my life would never recover from.

That worry is so persistent right now that I think about it in the shower. I stress about it at the grocery store or when I’m doing laundry. It worries me so much I wake up with acid stomach, too queasy to eat or drink and the smell of coffee makes my stomach turn.

The fear that my life direction won’t recover from this if it turns out to be a mistake is silly. I even KNOW it’s silly. Laughable. And yet I chew my fingers anyway.

Then it hit me.

My life never did recover from the BlissQuest. It was too altered, too unrecognizable. I wasn’t wrecked, but remade. The sheer volume of information gathered about life and living and the greater world experience was so dense – I could never again be what I’d been before I drove out that morning in May of 2006.

I feared not being able to recover the direction of my life, but the truth is, by the time the travel ended and I was back home in Portland, I was more reassembled/put back to wholeness/reshaped and evolved than ever before.

The prior fear proved to be unfounded, because I didn’t WANT to recover my life as it was prior to the BlissQuest. I was changed.

And I guess that’s what I fear now. Change.

I’m human, after all. Very few of us recognize and embrace change quickly. Nor do many of us do well with limitless uncertainty.

I recognize this feeling. It means that whatever happens, I won’t be the same when this is over. It’s a marker of distance and learning, effort and growth. Beyond this threshold there is no going back to what I knew before.

And yet, since I haven’t actually crossed the threshold, but sit here toeing the line, I have no frame of reference for what’s on the other side, to know if I want to accept the consequences I can only currently imagine. Believe me when I say I have a very active imagination – and so all the current scenarios I can create for the other side of the threshold are mostly doom and damnation.

Yet aren’t a lot of those scenarios the same ones that played out on my mind the night before I drove out on the quest? And I went anyway, because I refused to live a life controlled by my own fear.

So with the upcoming adventure framed in this perspective, I can say, “Bring it.”

I am afraid. The good kind of afraid. The healthy, alive kind of fear. Success or failure will come with wisdom and I’m eager for that knowledge. It’s reassuring to know the future of this outcome will rest squarely on my shoulders as a direct result of all the choices I’ve made up till this moment. Nobody drove me. Nobody else steered or had bids on my directions. Each choice, weighty or small brought me to this threshold with my own steam.

With my heart on my sleeve and my stomach in my throat – today I make the down payment for the professional editor and tomorrow, my manuscript goes out for polish.

There’s really no going back after that.

April 2012 will see the release of Murder of Crows, a novel by Athena.

The first disappointing piece of truth you will discover about indie publishing is: there is no proven method for success.

The first exciting piece of truth about indie publishing is: there is no proven method for success.

Furthermore, with the massive surge in e-publishing and indie authors – the definition of success, must be re-written. At least for myself anyway.

Joe Konrath had an excellent post about the definition of success – here.

I’d already been thinking about it, already wondering how I would find a sense of fulfillment with the culmination of the dream if writing for a living didn’t “look” like what I’ve imagined it would look like for the last twenty years.

My dream was to be able to travel the world and meet my readers, have books signings and adventures. My dream was to be entirely self-supported by my own creative craft while still being free to live the life of adventure that brings me such creative infusion and sense of connection to people around me. I worried that if the indie path didn’t allow me to do these things that I would feel like a failure, or be embittered by the loss of something I’d always wanted but couldn’t achieve.

Go ahead. Make fun. It is, after all, the closet package-dream of most writers.

The thing is, separating the reality from decades of fantasy is not as hard as I thought it would be.

It’s totally legitimate to want to be a self-supporting artist.

It’s totally legitimate to want to meet the people you’re trying to reach with your stories.

It’s totally legitimate to want to see the world you’re writing about.

Nothing about those parts of the dream are grandiose or ridiculous. Yet perhaps it’s time to redefine in my mind’s eye – what exactly those goals will look like, while also putting them in the frame of achievable success for an indie author.

I need to divorce myself from the dream of a big, fatty writing contract with a big six publisher. Why? Partly because that dream no longer serves my best interests, and does not support my craft. But also because if I’m clinging to that vision, I might not be able to recognize the other successes right in front of me that would validate and enrich my sense of purpose and achievement. In other words, if the unhealthy dream is still my focus, all other success will pale in comparison and I will always feel that loss or failure to succeed.

Is that giving up?

No.

Here’s why.

If the goal is to meet my readers. I can still achieve that. Granted the playing field is changed, but it is still an achievable goal and therefore worthy of being included in the continuation of the dream. This will require me to be open to new ways of meeting people that I hadn’t previously imagined. Luckily, with the BlissQuest and the year on the road, I got pretty good at low budget travel and impromptu adventure. These skills will also help serve this ultimate aim.

If the goal is to be self-supporting with my art. I can still achieve that. This requires a re-definition of what is considered financially successful. I’ll work on this.

If the goal is to see the world so I can keep writing about it, this is also still an achievable goal. Travel hacking is a blast. The funny thing is, since I was working such heavy hours for so long and still fitting in my writing – I never felt like I had the time or money to be able to travel. But being a self-supporting artist will allow me more time to work this in to my schedule because I won’t be working for someone else as well.

When looking at the parameters of the dream in its basic unadorned foundation, I realize these are still attainable. Therefore, with the goals defined and simplified, the fear of feeling like a failure for taking the indie route lessens as the excitement of an achievable goal builds.

Everything beyond those goals would be icing on the cake.

Because I no longer feel the need for validation from the industry, I’m freed up to be as artistic as I want and reach for my audience.

This in and of itself is a tremendous sense of success. One I might not have were I to go with a large publishing house.

The goals might not be reached quickly, but having the simple design of what I’m actually aiming for, and realizing it’s still the same dream, just a different reflection is extremely encouraging.  It’s more internal validation that I’m on the right path to be able to claim a sense of “ta-da!” and flourish in a life where I can successfully follow my bliss.

As I wrote the end of this post I started laughing. I’ve wandered off the BlissQuest trail in the last couple of year, meandering all over the place as chaos barreled into my life (as it does from time to time for everyone) But this post is the first time in a long while – I’ve felt the earth back under my feet and my internal compass reset.

The BlissQuest has established a new longitude and latitude.

Cool.