“if you proceed, you will change things”

The choice is simple, she imagines, I go forward or I don’t. I take the risk or I stay safe.

The fortune from her uneaten cookie leers up at her mockingly: If you proceed, you will change things.”

No shit, she thinks to herself before sighing.

What’s the worst that can happen, she wonders. If I go forward with this plan, if I take the risk, I could fail. And that will be a little embarrassing, sure but is that it? I’ll lose a little money, too…roughly a couple hundred bucks…which I can’t exactly afford right now. Still….

She rubs her hands across her eyes, her forehead, back around to her neck. Taking a deep breath she contemplates when happens if she doesn’t move forward: she’ll always be stuck in a job she hates…even if she changes jobs. There’s no such thing as a job she would love. She knows this, she’s tried tons of them, has friends in jobs she’d never considered or even heard of in some instances. She knows she’d hate their jobs too.

That’s the thing that gets her moving, not the possibility of failure, but the fear of never having tried to create something other than what she already knows is waiting for her. She’s a coward.

And yet, everyone calls her brave. She tells people what she’s doing, more out of nervousness than pride; and every last one of them tells her how brave she is. She laughs, if they only knew…

5 Minute Stretch Exercises are a creation of Laura Munson and were learned at Haven Writing Retreats. Write for five minutes, no corrections or stopping.
This prompt was taken from The Writing Life, by Annie Dillard.