Explosion paralysis.

YOU GUYS.

For the record and for those perhaps wondering: I didn’t die.

Which is maybe something I shouldn’t joke about anymore after my dad’s death last year.

Maybe.

I’m actually dealing with an epically fraught stretch of explosion paralysis, a term you’re no doubt unfamiliar with, considering it’s a somewhat nonsense phrase I recently came up with, but one which I will now attempt to define.

Because I got you, fam.

A therapist once told me that while most people struggle with a fear of failure, I actually struggle with a fear of success.

And yes, I thought it sounded like total bullshit when I first heard it, too.

Turns out dude was right, though, as good therapist so often are, and I think the reason for this seemingly bullshit state of affairs comes down to one fairly simple fact:

I’m used to failing.

Like, A LOT.

So while the idea of finally succeeding for once is, of course, attractive and exciting and many other words of that nature in theory, I’ve unfortunately become so comfortable with failing so godsdamn always that my overwhelmingly effective powers of self-sabotage end up taking over and running the show instead. Or, you know, pointedly not running the show, as the case may be, which is precisely what leads to the somewhat biblical struggle that is explosion paralysis.

Some of you are no doubt familiar with the term decision paralysis, which describes a state of complete and total overwhelm stemming from a need to make a fucking decision already, something many of we neurodivergent types face on the regular.

Executive dysfunction and all that.

Similarly, explosion paralysis describes a state of complete and total overwhelm stemming from a need to, you know, explode. But not in, like, a bad way or in any sort of literal sense, as in a case of novice transporter user-error, wherein the transported subject turns inside out and then explodes. It’s more of a cognitive explosion, if you will, akin to pulling the overtaxed stopper out of my brain…drain.

It’s not my fault. The shit just comes out like that.

And I did actually manage to yank that obnoxiously overachieving stopper earlier this year, resulting in the series of fabulously unmasked posts I wrote in February and their followup in March. I even succeeded in leaving it out long enough to launch an accompanying podcast at the end of April, with two additional preview episodes in May, all of which I was pretty fucking stoked about.

Apparently, however, my asshole fear of success didn’t share in that stokedness–probably due to its inherent asshole nature–so I eventually just sort of freaked out in a MY FUCKING GODS, WHAT THE FUCK HAVE I DONE type manner, unpublished all the podcast preview episodes, hammered the stopper back in, and disappeared.

Again.

Consequently, despite having several lifetimes’ worth of things to say all clamoring rather loudly to GTFO of my brain, I’ve been stuck in this ridiculous state of explosion paralysis ever since. But recently something momentous has begun to happen–my nerves have slowly begun firing again, meaning the tide of battle is finally turning.

You know what else that means?

A NEW OPPORTUNITY TO START OVER HAS ARRIVED!

And you guys definitely know how much I LOVE doing that.

So this short and sweet post becomes just the latest in a long and terribly undistinguished line of attempts at once again dislodging that quivering stopper, cranking the hydrant wide open, and letting it rip, as my dad would have said.

Because I’m bound to get it right one of these times…

Right?

(LIE TO ME IF YOU HAVE TO, DAMMIT.)