Courage

Oh my goodness. What a crazy month. Besides having two straight weeks of company (which, don’t get me wrong, was great fun and I wouldn’t trade for the world!), I also accepted a volunteer position on the ACFW VA board of directors to be social media coordinator. So, I’ve been trying to acclimate to that while facing my normal fear of failure (What if I do it wrong? What if I miss something? What if they don’t like my posts? What if I miss a deadline? What if I miss an announcement? What if I don’t post in all the groups I’m supposed to? Can I just go bury my head in the sand now?)

After three weeks of effective avoidance, I’ve also picked up Picture of the Past again, and am crippled by the same fear of failure (what if I get a detail wrong? What if I am rewriting it…and it’s WORSE? What if I miswrite a perspective? What if it isn’t ready in time for the conference in August? What if I get a detail wrong? What if I pour all my heart into it and everyone rejects it just like they did with DIL? Maybe I should just give all this up and go back to national security, where if I get something wrong it affects everyone, but I know that world so I’m STILL less afraid of it!)

But despite all the fear, I am forcing myself to go on. One step at a time. One post at a time. One scene at a time. Slow progress, but progress nonetheless. After all, they say courage is not the lack of fear, but moving forward in spite of it…it feels absurd to say I have courage when all I am doing is writing and pursuing new opportunities that involve no sort of danger and only minimal criticism, and yet…yet many do not make even those small steps, right? So I suppose this is courage in its own way–things don’t always have to be dangerous to require courage.

“Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.” —Anaïs Nin