The new step

Dostoevsky put this in the head of a young man pacing his room, working up the nerve to do something terrible. But it is just as true of the rest of us, working up the nerve to do something ordinary. Hand in the notice. Send the first message. Say the thing out loud at dinner.

The fear is never really about the step. It is about becoming someone who took it, and not being able to go back to being someone who did not. Which is, if you think about it, the point.

The person you keep meaning to become does not arrive by waiting. They turn up in the second after you do the thing, surprised to find you already there.