The source of my anxiety

Why is my stomach in knots about William Blake’s Inn? Sure, its a huge life goal of mine, and it may not ever get a premiere performance, but why is getting started on it so nerve-wracking?

Here’s one answer, a sonnet I wrote nearly fifty years ago:

Throwing Stones

Throwing stones without aim: so where
they land is good, or there is all right, too.
Es macht nichts, it doesn’t matter. Air
falls, doesn’t hinder rubble, lets it through.
Turn upon determined point. Now throw.
Air feathers, pulls, prevents, does not assist
the arc, affixes where the stone must go,
makes the fact, the truth, of hit or missed.
Or toss the stone into a wet, blank stream.
Currents stop their placid rush along
their course and splash against deflected dream.
The obstacle has set up right and wrong.
Our goals become, then, not a target which
we hit, but tend to miss: and that’s the bitch.

As long as I haven’t started actual work on getting William Blake’s Inn in front of a paying audience, it can remain a shinyperfect, a Platonic ideal out there in the Empyrean, untouched by financial necessities or casting issues or looming deadlines.

But as soon as I pull the trigger, then the possibility of failure is no longer theoretical. It is now possible to fail, if not probable. Now I’m aiming at my target — and I may miss.