"Fear"

I looked up top 10 lists for fear and saw zombies.  Really?  How many zombies have you fended off recently?  How many spider or snake attacks?  Have you fallen off any tall buildings?  Did your plane go down?  Crazy people.  I'm kind of pleased that some of my fears about the environment and politicians have moved up on the list in the last year -- though quite displeased there are impelling reasons for those issues to move up the list.

Don't get me wrong, I don't want to look at spiders either.  I just think it's unlikely one of them is going to kill me -- unlike my perfectly legitimate paranoia about ticks, which gets to the point of a lot of fears.  Ticks are foreign to me.  I'm afraid I don't know how to protect myself adequately.  The deer raiding my garden carry ticks, so it's a reasonable threat.  Ticks carry Lyme disease.  I don't want to catch that.  Kill deer.  Reverse climate change so ticks die in winter the way nature intended.  Vote all the climate change denying politicians out of office.

I'm willing to admit my tick paranoia might be a little overblown.  We don't have to kill all the deer, just the ones plaguing my neighborhood.  Give the deer birth control and napalm the places ticks lurk.  Maybe cull the herd and feed orphans venison.  I'm reasonable.  There might be a few action plans which I could buy into supporting.

The point is to actually look at our fears and figure out ways to address them.  Let's take fear of failure as an example.  If you're afraid to try something because you're afraid you'll fail, you've failed.  If you half-ass something because you're afraid, you've failed.  I understand dread of putting yourself fully into something and finding in the end that you didn't achieve what you wanted but that's the risks in achieving success.  You have to try or you certainly won't win.  Sometimes a failed effort leads to a better victory in something we didn't even know to look for before the attempt.

Okay, time for a smooth transition into ducks and fish...

Dark and gloomy lake full of ducks

The lake's spillway, which is the overflow for this human-made lake

I went to Pennsylvania this week.  It was dark and overcast.  Kids were in school.  To me, a perfect for a day trip to Linesville Spillway at Pymatuning Lake to look at carp.  This was my friend's idea.  I don't usually go out of my way to see carp, but apparently quite a few people do -- but not on my dark, overcast day.  You can see video of the reason why here.  That's a lot of fish.  They're really big too, like 3-4' long.

Close up of ugly carp mouth which was big enough to swallow your leg

We took country roads back to Ohio and stopped at the cheese factory where I bought a huge block of Swiss which I later broke up into smaller chunks and froze for later.  We ate lunch at the Amish restaurant and had comfort food.  We stopped at a produce stand where I bought pickling cukes and more.  I love this time of year for produce.  I was back home early enough to can plums, chop up peppers, and who knows what else.  It was a very nice day.  Who needs sunshine?  It just gives me migraines anyway.

I'm noticing that I like to paint apples lately, and each kind of apple has different meanings to me.  The apple above is a bit of my current painting, the part next to the post office box I showed you last week.  I've made progress on this piece and am starting to hope I'll be able to show you the finished painting soon.

"Monster"

Public speaking is an invisible monster for most people.  I wrote about one of my early experiences here.  I wish everyone could have an affirming experience when they face a fear, though I'll admit my fear of public speaking persisted a long time even though I've had positive experiences with it.  Nobody's booed me at any rate.

I had a boss who was absolutely wonderful: supportive, kind... challenging.  He made me lead meetings and speak at staff meetings.  That was about 250 faces looking only at a shy introvert.  I was pretty sure Leon was going to give me a stroke if he didn't succeed in helping me grow.

I survived, and reinforced one of my core beliefs that most people want us to succeed.  My coworkers may have been bored silly during my presentation, but they went out of their way to say I'd done well.  Over and over, people have affirmed my public speaking efforts even though I've done everything I could to avoid them.  This isn't to brag that I'm good at it.  I think people have been on my side because I admit I'm nervous and laugh at myself.  I make an effort and try to do better.

There was a time when I was in a bad marriage, lived as a recluse in the woods, then moved back to suburbia and got a job.  I'd forgotten how to speak.  Not just standing in front of a crowd, I mean I forgot really basic stuff.  A kid said "hi" to me and I couldn't think of a response.  He saw me choking internally and gave me a funny look, and then shrugged and skipped off.  I went to my office and had a meltdown.  I called a friend who supplied the answer, "You say 'hi' back".  Oh.  Duh.

Next time I saw a kid I said "hi".  I remembered to smile too.  I got better at it, which was a really good thing because I had to get on stage and talk to hundreds of people at a time for that job.  I had to teach classes too.  I dealt with it.

I think most fears are like this.  People really don't die when they have to give an oral report at school or present something in a meeting.  A monster isn't going to come from under the bed and a bear isn't going to maul you.

We're afraid of mistakes that will in some way ruin our lives or subject us to criticism.  Here's a hard fact, criticism doesn't kill you either.  Unless someone is coming at you with a knife, you're probably safe to try tackling one of your invisible monsters.  Start with an easy one.  If the people around you don't support your effort, find someone who will.  That doesn't mean find someone who just says you're always wonderful.  Find someone who is willing to be there for you while you try.  Find a Leon who helps push you to do better.

I'm grateful to the people who have helped me through my life.  I feel fortunate, even when I'll be the first to say that I've had more than my share of crap in life too.  I think the point of living is taking our talents and experiences and doing something with them, learning to do better as we go.  That's true of painting a picture, and it's true of creating our lives.