Feel the Fear

IMG_0769, a photo by Lillput on Flickr.

I'm emerging from a dark place this weekend. I've been feeling pretty "m'eh" all week.

I get this periodically. It's now part of my psyche and I'm learning to live with it. I don't remember it happening so much in the past but then again my life was a lot simpler with far less to cause me to worry or get blue.

I guess it's a bit of a post-holiday come down coupled with a sudden surge of "Oh my God I've got all this difficult stuff to do!"

Our holiday in Porth (a suburb of Newquay) was great. Lots of walking, reasonable weather, good company, companionable meals followed by board games and cards of an evening. Better yet, next to no phone signal (although we did eventually hijack the wi-fi) so I barely thought of all the stuff waiting for me at home.

So I came home with a bit of a bump...and with an ear problem I couldn't get sorted out for a few days.

I had project documents to do, meetings to organize, building work to attend to and then the churning realisation that if I'm going to put my house on the market soon, I'd better pull my finger out and consider the logistics of that.

That conspired with the unique sense of isolation I get when I can't hear and the fretting began.

I began to doubt I could convince anyone to support our project, and even if they did whether I could get it delivered.

Then the thought of not living in this house became almost terrifying. The idea that I'd be spending significant portions of my life in a new home in a part of the country I barely know made me panicky. I mean, I was brought up in Keynsham and have lived in Bristol since I left home at 23.

All of this lead to a strong sense of "I can't do this" with the accompanying racing pulse, and dry mouth of anxiety coupled with obsessive (yet unconscious) tooth grinding as I wrote my project initiation report.

Then I heard part of "Total Crackpot Hour" (sorry, Woman's Hour) which did nothing to improve my mood as they spoke about self-help books. During the section they kept mentioning "Feel the Fear and Do it Anyway" which seemed to polarise opinion the most. I'm not one for self help books so I don't know it but the phrase was used to me at a time when I was really struggling a number of years ago, when everything terrified me.

By Friday morning, I'd had enough. I had to get up fairly early to meet a stone mason for a job and that meant hacking across town in the rain. My mood was pretty much as black as the clouds overhead. I did manage to get a nice coffee in the Bearpit, though, and that was a plus.

I was early to meet the mason, and I misjudged the bus stop so I had 15 minutes or so to sit in park and check my emails. The sun came out briefly and I relaxed a little.

Then I met the mason who was hard work, initially. But he warmed to the task at hand and it was easy to see not only was he very skilled but he had a passion for his work that was quite infectious. Our brief meeting over, I grabbed some lunch from the local supermarket and got the bus back home.

I had a doctor's appointment in the afternoon to sort my ear out and I still wasn't in the mood to return to my project docs so I caught up on emails and other mundanities.

The nurse in the surgery who was sorting out my ears was brilliant and five minutes later I was walking back out of the surgery with hearing restored albeit the left side of my entire head feeling like I'd been assaulted and some residual dizziness.

That evening S enquired whether everything was OK since I'd been pretty quiet. I told him about the pain and he prescribed icecream...which worked a treat. That made me smile. I also explained my mood to him.

This in itself made me take stock of the things that have been bothering me.

Then I remembered what my cousin had said about me - that I resembled her mum (my favourite aunt) in that even when jobs seem too complicated, or insurmountably hard I (and she) have a tendency of saying things like "Oh, it can be done" and then rolling up our sleeves.

I also remember my brother "outlaw" being the one to say "feel the fear..." to me when I was working out whether or not I had the courage to meet someone (in fact my friend and business partner TD) for lunch for the first time.

I've applied that countless times since: the first time we took ExtraVerte to a real, posh architecture firm; the first time I did a photography event; every time I got involved with internet dating - so often in fact that I don't usually feel the fear any more.

So I woke up this morning a little more ready to take on the World. Well, not the World so much as my life.

So the laundry's done, I've picked up the toiletries from the floor next to the landing cupboard that I couldn't even be bothered to put away when they arrived with the shopping; and I even made myself a proper dinner.

I've gone back to my project document with renewed vigour and I've exchanged a bit of banter on Twitter.

Yeah the stuff to do is still there but I'm at the point of rolling up my sleeves and doing it anyway.

Meanwhile I'm also watching Yoda levitate a space ship using The Force and for now I'm thinking "ach...piece of cake"

:-)

Postscript:  Well, whaddya know?  I spoke a little too soon. Other than a nice brunch with M, Sunday totally sucked.  Talk about your three steps forward and two back.
I couldn't summon the wherewithall to do anything other than fill the bird feeders.
This is the nature of the moody thing...I know it is...
But today's been better.  Got a fair bit of stuff done.
You never know...I might actually be heading upwards again...