I was stress crying again. At this point, I feel like I should set aside time each week to have an existential crisis to maximise productivity. Here’s the lowdown on what triggered me today.

At the moment, I’m about halfway through my first module of my Open University course and as you can imagine I’ve been stressing as if failing will completely define me a the extent of my capabilities. Classic Courtney. I’ve never been any different. I am my own worst enemy when it comes to this kind of thing. I put so much pressure on myself and always feel like I will disappoint people if I don’t succeed immediately. This isn’t true and realistically, I know that.

On my course, we had an assignment tied to creative writing, something I hold close to my heart, except obviously there’s a catch – it has to be academic. Just in case you haven’t noticed, that isn’t exactly my style.

I’ve been referred to as “a rebel without a cause” more than once and now I get where they’re coming from because initially, I dug my heels in and started thinking of reasons to drop the course. MY ARTISTIC FREEDOM HAS BEEN CHALLENGED AND I REFUSE TO CONFORM.

Haha. Drama Queen.

After ten minutes of straight up ugly sobbing, I remembered who I am and collected myself. So far, I’ve gone through life making everything work for me and I’ll do that here too. I’ve never gone into anything with the goal of abandoning ship if things get a little tough but I also know that using my passion in a way I don’t enjoy will drain me more than not getting 100% on any assignment. If I burn myself out now then taking the whole course would have been for nothing.

I’m not going to let my fear of failure get the better of me, as my boyfriend, Andy, reminded me, it’s better to try and fail than never try at all. And I won’t quit the course because I love to learn so if I can take something away from this, be it a degree or not, I’ll still be happy. I’m at a point in my life where that means so much more to me than anything else.

To some, I’m a rebel without a cause but to me, I’m a rebel with a cause for happiness.

That, or I’m reeeeeeally bad at taking criticism.

Fighting the system is dumb, I understand that, but doing things that make you miserable and lose interest is dumber so whilst I won’t completely flunk the assignment, I am doing things my way. And I’m not upset anymore now that I’ve thought of it like this. Failure isn’t the be all and end all of my writing career unless I allow it. Also, Andy just messaged me to let me know he saved me one of the cookies he’s made and now I’m wondering if our wedding will look like the Pinterest board I made for it.

Anyway, what I’m trying to say is don’t do things that make you unhappy just to please everyone else or because of a fear of failure because at the end of it all, if you aren’t happy then the only one you’ve disappointed and failed is yourself.