I spend most of my days terrified.  Certain things help: ice cream, Grey’s Anatomy, mountain biking, sleeping, more ice cream.  But the terror remains.  At times,  I envy people who have panic attacks.  I would imagine it’s like binging on fear.  You get it all over with at one time, then move on.  I’m more of a maintenance fearer.  A little fear, every day,  a pinch between your cheek and gum.

Let’s get it straight, I don’t know how panic attacks work.  I don’t have that tight of a grip on reality.  I do know that surgeons are probably not talking about sleeping with one another while they are doing a Coronary Artery Bypass Graft.  I know Grey’s Anatomy isn’t reality.  Well, a part of me does.   The other thinks it is the only reality there is.

When fax machines first came out, I was terrified of faxing.  I never knew if you typed in the number first, then scanned thing, or if it was the other way around.   I would ask people to help me.  They would roll their eyes.  People don’t like people who are fearful.  People also don’t like whiners.  I’m afraid.  I whine.  I’m wildly unpopular.

Bookstores also scare me.  Libraries are better, since there’s not that commercial demon sitting on the cash register, licking its talons, but I’m not as comfortable as I once was around bookshelves.  I look at all the books and all I see are competitors, writers who have more talent than I could ever hope to have.  What business do I have adding my voice to the din?

My latest fear is reading other people’s blogs.   I have a blog-o-phobia.  Because I’m always comparing, judging, and assuming I suck.  Who cares what one ant is saying, out in the west, when there are more talented ants that have been blogging longer?  At this stage, me blogging is like standing in a blank room and singing my own praises to four white walls.  Only they aren’t walls, but windows, and everyone is watching me stand in an empty room and sing my own praises.  Pathetic.

However, I can fax now.  I really can.  You type in the number, then scan the document.  Ha.  I’m a frakkin’ genius.  And I’ll blog.  And I’ll go into bookstores.  And I’ll do all the things I’m afraid of doing because what is fear if not a challenge for us to be true to our better selves?