Fear of Missing Out on Failure

The Inscrutable Motives of Go-Getters

Do you lack a normal FOMO response?

Busy people are getting sh*t done, buzzing with excessive energy, even if that means overpaying for a venti double-mochaccino every morning.

I marvel at their mad motivations and cower in their shadows.

As a semi-avoidant hermit hobbled by generations of quiet, retiring chromosomes I can only speculate. Maybe such humans are driven by fear, touched by an angel, greedy AF, and/or compulsively hyperactive due to a medical condition.

Like that dude who hears voices and walks all over town, all day long.

Every town has one.

We frazzled Americans have been trained to hustle, ever since those awful winters at Jamestown when Pilgrims were eating bark — before the natives took pity on them.

I’m pretty sure none of my forbearers was a bark-eater. They came over later, much later, after we built drive-thrus selling $1 burgers.

FOMO Blind

I dusted off my philosophy degree and got to thinking.

Where I live, we have an abundance of high-achieving 75-year-olds with management skills. I have been observing them.

Could these mysteriously buoyant busybodies be excellent managers? If so, what are they managing?

Calendars? Time? Other people? All of these?

Or, are they geniuses at saying NO when asked to take on a project their gut rejects?

I suspect some of them are driven by Fear of Missing Out (FOMO).

Like a psychopath with a barely discernible heart beat, I have a barely discernible FOMO response. Instead, I am saddled with the opposite: Fear of Obligation Overload & Overdoing Everything (FOOOE).

I would rather miss out than become exhausted and cranky. Us HSPs (highly sensitive persons) get overwhelmed quickly by carnivals and malls and all that is contained in them.

Imagine your job is to run a shop. The more customers you have each day — the more folks you talk to, the greater number of interactions — the more money you make.

My shop would have a strict customer limit, and I would work from about 10:30 am to 1, with a substantial lunch break. Too much chit-chat leads to tiredness, a desire for sugary treats, and — if left untreated: intractable misanthropy.

If I let customers come in all day, I would sink into a long-term FOOOE funk.

Blame it on Extroversion

Science has already partly explained these hypothetical, highly successful mall shop owners. They are the same people who love cruises and spunky facial expressions in their copious Facebook selfies.

Extroversion is encouraged in America, like wealth, as a virtue.

We introverts must use all our wiles and scheming and book learning to invent money-making devices that privatize leisure activities. We toil and tinker in basements to build products encouraging people to stay in their houses. Hence, the boom in personal computers and Slankets.

Yet, even an extrovert cannot dive willy-nilly into daily life; they must plan.

Take Sylvia, for example, who has several important jobs. She’s 80-something, is the costume designer for all the plays, serves on at least two church committees, crochets mats for the homeless, and travels and socializes frequently. Those are only the things I know about. I suspect she’s up to far more entirely legal shenanigans.

Sylvia lives in a huge house on the lake which I suspect she paid for by earning money via years of focused busyness.

To quote the cowardly lion:

“What’s she got that I ain’t got?”

Could she be doing exactly what she wants? Wow, mind-blown. I can only wish I wanted to do all that.

Meanwhile, I cross small items off my to-do list and consider my single upcoming social obligation for this week in great detail.

The Depression Theory

I used to blame my FOOOE on depression and anxiety, but a miraculous turn of events cured me of both afflictions. I still get anxious, but in a normal way, like when something scary happens.

Before, it was all the time, which as you can imagine was distracting.

It’s surprising to me that depression/anxiety is NOT the reason for my lack of focus and motivation in life.

No —I truly believe we are all born with different capacities for motivation.

I used to have a friend named Drake who was a hot hunk of muscular sexiness. He told me he had virtually no sex drive, and he was fine with that. It wasn’t ill-health, he just wasn’t motivated to seek out or engage in sex.

I guess nowadays he might be classified as asexual, but when I tried to look it up there were 8 billion articles about how to fix low sex drive in men, so apparently, it’s called “you’re broken and we must fix you immediately.”

When No Means Yes

People who prioritize themselves and their goals make greater progress toward their ultimate destination, and it starts with setting a goal and saying NO when you need to.

I have slowly sussed out this truth but applied it unevenly.

If you are going to say NO to being part of some committee, it’s a good idea to have a YES waiting in the wings.

Otherwise, instead of feeling empowered, you might just feel left out.

It’s a challenge for all of us to take on more without feeling overwhelmed. I get sidetracked in both defining and sticking with multiple priorities.

I have a daily to-do list, but when it comes to longer-range goals I suffer from psychic myopia.

Is FOOOE really Fear of Failure (FOF) in disguise and with a lot more Os?

I feel like in life, you often have a choice: take on something big and risk being overwhelmed and failing, or avoid responsibility and risk being left out or bored.

The Excessive Hobby Syndrome

Jobs help us structure our lives, because nine hours of work plus commuting doesn’t leave much leftover time. As adults, we spend a lot of time doing chores and caring for others.

So we don’t get much practice at figuring out how to occupy ourselves when the carpet is pulled out and we stop working or kids leave home.

I’ve satirized my excessive hobbies in Childfree Lady Dies in Unicycle Accident because when you don’t have an immediate, non-negotiable Life Purpose like being a mother or a superhero or having a full-time job, you have to figure it out for yourself.

I recently gave up my fledgling attempts at pickleball when I realized I’d rather not leave the house more than two times a week after dark, so Thursday night ball-swatting under the court lights wasn’t going to work.

What is a normal number of obligations? It’s gotta vary with each individual.

This Explains Why Men Can’t Retire

When people, usually men, say they can’t retire because they don’t know what they would do, I get perplexed. My FOOOE instinct is clear and strong.

It’s obvious to me that being saddled with hours of Nothing beats the alternative, endless minutes of Something, every damn time.

Guys, you would no longer be chained to an ever-churning, relentless wheel that occasionally drags you under the creek!

You would go for long walks when the weather is nice and burrow in your living room when there is an ice storm.

Many of us would prefer having someone else provide structure.

I’ve had a hard time coming to terms with my inherent lack of motivation, probably because I am a Type A personality from a family of the same, and I grew up with a lot of privileges.

Plus, we are taught that having big goals, big dreams, and a desire for wealth and fame is the normal human condition.

The problem with that load of horseshit is it only works for the 5% of humanity who happen to be born highly motivated or righteously driven by the unfairness of life. Some, too, were pummelled by their insecure or needy (or simply resource-poor) parents to “have something to show for yourself.”

I mean, it’s terrific that such people exist — but I gotta believe the rest of us who shirk responsibility are far more common and have a purpose, too.