Wanting without doing is a slow death.  It is a death that is encouraged by your friends, your family, your loved ones, and your social conditioning...but it is still a death.  Concieving without experiencing is a silent agony.  It is an agony that comes with no risk and no failure...but it is an agony.  What is truly terrifying is not failure, not embarrassment, not disappointment...what is truly terrifying is that vaccuum of the silent nothing that comes from doing what they say you are "supposed to" and not doing what you want to. 

To say yes to your dreams, your ideas, your desires (even the wildest, darkest, brightest, craziest ones) is to say yes to life.  Even an infant knows that life is about reaching, growing, wanting, trying, failing, and then trying again.  Yet a "rational" adult says that there's no point, what do I know, and who am I...all as he suffers amidst the boredom of unfulfillment and self-loathing.

To lack desire is to be already gone.  To fight desire is to be seeking the path toward death.  I know you've been told to be careful.  I know you see all of the problems, that you're not naive, and that the potential of failure is obvious to all, but you will not fail for the simple reason that you will do.

There's no fear in doing.  Even your failures will tell you one of three things: 1) you can still improve, 2) you know for sure that you aren't any good or it isn't possible, or 3) now that you know the reality, you don't want to do it anyway.  Whichever of these outcomes, there is so much peace in knowing the reality.  Experiencing the reality is the only way to move on!  It is that "what if" kind of regret that eats us from inside.  Ironically, the "what if" is always imagined.  Only experience can kill the imagined withthe known.

I don't think you are any different from me.  I don't need to reference anything to know that what I'm saying is true.  This comes from a lifetime of experience, sensing, watching, and doing.  This is the path toward deep, meaningful happiness.  This is the a fundamental and essential secret to life.  You can read this with a critical eye or you can accept it as truth.  Your choice, but it is still true.