Fear Is Boring

And podcast news!

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Between the Wines is free—like a book club, but a wee more chaotic and snarky. Paid subscriptions keep it going and support my writing. If you’re enjoying these essays, please consider upgrading. Cheers! 🍷

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Fear is boring. It’s the great equalizer, the one thing that keeps us small. Once upon a time, fear kept us alive. But now? It mostly keeps us from living. Caged.

Yet so much of what we fear is such low stakes that taking a bird’s eye view, they’re laughable. Ridicule and shame feel terrifying, but they’re really not. They’re low stakes that we mistake for cutter catastrophe.

Unfortunately for me, this is a lesson I finally (finally!) understood and could internalize.

In eighth grade, I bought the coolest pair of high top Converses: black canvas with a fuzzy leopard print lining. For a decidedly uncool kid, I felt unstoppable. Tying myself up the first morning I could wear them to school, I made big loops with the laces as if underscoring the shoes grandness.

Come lunchtime, I strut into the cafeteria like I owned it. Until…. Until, I stepped through one of my double-knotted loops, entangling my feet. I took a few staggered miniature steps, trying to free myself, and in slow motion crashed to the floor… bag and lunch and dignity sprawling across blue tile.

When I look back, the scene itself is funny and cinematic and humiliating. For the next twenty years, it looped in my brain like a blooper reel. Any time embarrassment or shame creeped up on me, I was thrown right back into that feeling of having hundreds of eyes witness my very literal fall from grace.

Maybe it’s the juxtaposition of how great I felt to how quickly that feeling devolved, but I’ve lived in fear of embarrassing myself to that extent ever again. Despite the fear, I’ve embarrassed myself plenty of times regardless. The real embarrassment, though, is how many things I avoided or failed to enjoy because of the risk of shame.

Let me explain. I have now jumped out of a plane twice—once when I was eighteen, once two weeks ago at thirty-five. The first time I was so nervous I couldn’t even say my name (not an exaggeration). The second time, though I was still anxious, I was excited for the jump. In the first experience, I asked the instructor to push me out of the plane. At 35, I wanted to take the leap myself. Those 45 seconds of free fall is pure magic. It’s an absolute rush, rebellion, the best natural high. You’re invincible, defying the laws of nature, and whatever happens next is out of your control. That feeling is so so freeing.

I wish I’d spent the last twenty years remembering the fall, the moment in the air that I was weightless, not the moment after I fell. I’ve applied that fall to everything, or at least the fear and the shame of it. But what if I applied the weightlessness, the rush, the pure adrenaline to everything I did instead? I’d dive into things, regardless of what others thought. And I’d be cooler for it.

“Fear is boring” is one of the simplest, most sensible lessons I absorbed from Elizabeth Gilbert’s Big Magic. But sometimes the simplest truths take decades to stick.

Life’s too short to fear the fall. Pour the wine. Take the leap.

Speaking of fearless—our Open Book: Reading Between the Wines podcast (with Jessica Sorentino) is finally live! You can listen on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Last Saturday, Jessica and I covered James Frey’s Next to Heaven. It’s a salacious, eat-the-rich thriller where everyone’s guilty of something. And this novel is polarizing AF. Potentially more contentious than his first book, A Million Little Pieces. He received so much hate for it when it came out (even from Oprah!) because parts of his memoir were fictionalized or exaggerated. Who expected anything different in a story about a recovering crack addict? That’s what made it art! That book, regardless of the contempt it garnered, birthed a new genre: autofic. Which, if you ask me, is way more fun than straight nonfiction.

His new novel doubles down. The writing is sharp, chaotic, and gloriously rule-breaking. The writing style is similar to his first with plenty of line breaks, very little punctuation, no quotation marks or dialogue tags. It’s revolutionary and playful. There’s no apology. And people HATE it. To me? Frey’s IDGAF attitude to storytelling is refreshing. It makes you think about writing differently. It brings you into the story faster. It is sharp and raw.

I find that kind of creative defiance exhilarating. I’m absolutely inspired by it. New goal? Make my writing more playful, keep it joyful.

I had to pair this compulsively readable book with a wine that was just as compulsively drinkable. Enter Le Roc Fronton Rosé: Ninette. The label looks pretty simple, but that’s the lie—there’s a lot of complexity and layering in this wine. It’s a darker Rosé, bled from red grape skin, with ripe fruit and a sharp, structured backbone. It’s complex, audacious, and unapologetic. Sound familiar?

High marks for both.

Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree - I know people who will go to war over this book, and for that I salute them. Maybe it was my headspace at the time of reading, but this one wasn’t for me.
Next to Heaven by James Frey - please see above :)
Alchemy of Secrets by Stephanie Garber - I had no idea where this book was going and I LOVE that. Garber is the queen of keeping you guessing. I didn’t realize there would be a sequel so at first was very disappointed by the end, but now I’m THRILLED! Bring it on.
Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert - This has sat on my TBR for YEARS. I didn’t expect to love it as much as I did, but seeing that I felt I was in a creative rut, I decided to give it a try. So glad I did.
If You’re Seeing This It’s Meant for You by Leigh Stein - I am so so so excited to finish this book and talk about it with Jessica Sorentino on the podcast. I went to one of Stein’s book talks and she’s phenomenal. Also… rabbit named Owen Wilson? Give me more.
Small Boat by Vincent Delecroix - My foray into litfic continues. This one won the International Booker Prize and I’m really looking forward to it… even though I’m expecting to cry throughout.

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Please consider clicking the little heart on this essay—your engagement helps more than you think! I’d love to hear from you if this essay made you ~feel~ something, have read a book I recommended, or think I’m wildly off about my wine pairings. 🍷

xx,
bb