In a brave admission of her own vulnerability, 24-year-old Sonia Sarraf said that, lately – in spite of drinking nearly four gallons of cold brew daily to stay productive – her fear of failure has been keeping her up at night.
“Yeah, my fear of failure keeps me wide-eyed and jittery late into the night,” she told reporters. “Sometimes my heart starts racing so fast, I have to clear a space in the dozens of empty Starbucks cups on my floor just so I can sit and do some deep breathing exercises.”
Sources close to Sonia told reporters that both insomnia and a fervent obsession with cold brew are relatively new occurrences for her.
“I never thought fear of failure would make me an irritable, headache-ridden insomniac, but here we are,” Sonia said. “The other night, I was so stressed about not living up to my potential that I could barely enjoy my 8 p.m. 32-ounce bottle of undiluted cold brew concentrate. That’s when I knew I needed to start making some changes.”
Sources confirmed that by “changes,” Sonia meant “being gentler with herself” and not “cutting down on her cold brew intake after 2 a.m.”
“I rarely get a full night’s sleep anymore,” Sonia told reporters. “I chalked it up to my fear of failure, mostly because I didn’t want to look into it anymore, and because, according to my therapist, I’m ‘astonishingly unwilling to enact any meaningful changes in my life.’ Whatever that means.”
When reporters pressed Sonia for more details about what it was exactly that she was afraid of failing at, she was momentarily stumped.
“Hmm, wow, yeah, that’s a really great question,” she said while also googling “coffee enemas how to.” “I guess just the usual stuff like being bad at my job or telling everyone I’m training for a marathon but then never actually signing up for one.”
She continued, saying, “It’s funny, though, because I’ve had these fears for years now, but I didn’t have an issue sleeping until recently. Pretty much right around the time when pumpkin spice lattes came back. I guess the cold weather blues are making it worse.”
At press time, Sonia’s therapist begged her to reevaluate what might be causing her insomnia, but a red-eyed, gaunt-cheeked Sonia stopped her mid-sentence, saying she couldn’t even think about figuring out what was causing her sleeplessness until she had her fourth cold brew of the day.
