Confronting the Unknown: What I’ve Been Putting Off and Why It’s Time to Face It

What have you been putting off doing? Why?

There’s a weight that’s been looming over me, an invisible burden I keep shoving to the back of my mind. It’s not tangible, like an undone project with a deadline or a glaring responsibility staring me in the face. No, it’s subtler, almost insidious in its ability to stay hidden under the layers of everyday distractions. Yet, it is ever-present—a reminder of what I’ve been putting off doing. What have I been avoiding? If I were to answer simply: confronting myself.

In the bustling rhythm of life, where productivity is king and action is worshipped, it’s easy to avoid the deeper questions, the ones that make us squirm and shift uncomfortably in our chairs. After all, introspection takes time. It’s not neatly confined to a to-do list. It’s messy. It’s often unsettling, and more often than not, it reveals truths that are hard to face.

I’ve been putting off a conversation with myself that has needed to happen for months, maybe even years. The kind of conversation that questions the very structure of how I live, the choices I make, and the desires I claim to pursue. Avant-garde by nature, this reluctance to introspect doesn’t fit neatly into a box. Instead, it’s a refusal to disrupt the comfortable rhythm, the status quo.

Why? Why have I been avoiding this?

It’s because this dialogue isn’t an easy one. It’s not filled with quick fixes or guaranteed answers. It’s the antithesis of modern culture’s obsession with efficiency. This conversation would force me to linger in uncertainties, question every label I’ve attached to myself—be it professional, personal, or even philosophical. Confronting myself would require diving into the murky waters of my unresolved fears, past decisions that sit uncomfortably in my memory, and ambitions that I’ve, perhaps, outgrown but refuse to let go of.

One of the greatest lies we tell ourselves is that we don’t have time. Time, the most democratic of all resources, becomes the scapegoat. “I don’t have time to sit and reflect; I need to get this task done.” Or: “I’ll think about that later—when things calm down.” But when does that “calm” ever arrive? We’ve been wired to believe that if we just keep moving, the questions will dissolve. But they don’t. They accumulate, like unread emails, waiting for a moment of reckoning.

For me, the moment of reckoning has been postponed, indefinitely. There’s a stack of these self-addressed letters I’ve yet to open, each containing a question: What do you truly want? What is your relationship to fear? Are you hiding behind your work? Do you understand what success means to you?

These aren’t questions that have easy answers. And perhaps that’s why they remain unopened. The answers, or lack thereof, challenge the narrative I’ve built around my identity. They threaten to dismantle the neat lines I’ve drawn around who I think I am and how I fit into the world.

In a culture that rewards constant motion, pausing feels like rebellion. In fact, it almost feels avant-garde, like an act of subversion against a machine that thrives on forward momentum. And yet, isn’t that exactly what’s needed? To stop. To question. To listen to the silence that emerges when the noise of daily life subsides.

What am I afraid of discovering? Perhaps it’s that some of the things I’ve been working toward for so long no longer resonate with me. Or that the person I thought I would become isn’t who I am. It’s easier to stay on the path of least resistance, to keep doing what I’ve always done, even if it doesn’t satisfy a deeper need within me. In many ways, it’s less risky to stay in the familiar—even if the familiar is unfulfilling—than it is to venture into the unknown.

And that, I think, is what I’ve been putting off: venturing into the unknown of my own desires, motivations, and limitations. We live in a world that values certainty. The unknown is scary, unchartered, and often viewed as a problem to be solved rather than a landscape to be explored. But what if the unknown isn’t a threat but a gateway to something richer, deeper, more aligned with who I really am?

In the avant-garde, nothing is predictable. Everything is an experiment, and the outcomes are uncertain. Perhaps this is why introspection feels so daunting to me—it requires a relinquishing of control. It requires a willingness to admit that I don’t have all the answers, that I might be wrong, or that I might need to change course entirely. The very essence of avant-garde is to challenge the conventional, to push boundaries, to step into spaces where the rules are yet to be written.

And maybe that’s where I need to go—to step into the undefined, the nebulous space where I can no longer rely on past versions of myself to guide me. I need to break free from the preconceived notions of who I think I should be and allow myself the radical permission to be who I am. But that requires honesty. And honesty, as we know, is one of the most avant-garde acts of all.

There’s a certain safety in inertia, in not asking the difficult questions. The answers, after all, might require action, and action disrupts. But that’s the point of art, isn’t it? To disrupt. To unsettle. To provoke thought. And I suppose, in many ways, I have been avoiding this confrontation because it would force me to become the artist of my own life again, to sculpt it, to change it, to tear it apart and rebuild it if necessary.

The question I’ve been putting off asking myself is this: What does it mean to live authentically? It’s a question that defies the status quo, that refuses to be answered in a soundbite, and that demands I sit with the discomfort of not knowing. But maybe that’s the most revolutionary act of all—to sit with the unknown, to embrace it, to explore it, and to allow it to guide me forward, even when it doesn’t promise clarity or comfort.

In a world where answers are demanded, perhaps the most avant-garde thing I can do is to revel in the questions. After all, it’s the questions that keep us alive, that keep us searching, that keep us human. And perhaps, just perhaps, it’s the questions I’ve been putting off that will ultimately lead me to the most profound answers of all.

#SelfReflection #PersonalGrowth #Introspection #FaceYourFears #AuthenticLife #AvantGarde #InnerJourney #Mindfulness