Woodard Wednesday: I'm scared to write this

What are you afraid to do?

Ok, I'll go first.  I am afraid of everything.  I'm also afraid of nothing.  I'm glad we had this talk and I could be so insightful.

Let me explain.  I have some scary things going on in my life right now.  Let's focus on those so I can work myself into a martini-for-lunch-needing-frenzy.  Here's a list: living alone and being single, watching my baby-boy (Mick) getting old, taking steps to open a new clinic with a team of people depending on me to succeed, and the completely rational fear of a rogue tree branch falling on my head in Central Park during a run ensuring certain death.  It happens; I've heard stories...

me as a cute baby, except it isn't me at all.  totally could have been though so I don't like your judgement

The first point of living along and being single.  The last time I was single, Facebook hadn't been invented.  How's that for some perspective?  Back in my day (yes I just said that) you would go to a loud bar and order overpriced drinks, stewing in your misery and hoping to find someone who's misery resonated with yours.  It was poetry.  How did you know if their misery matched yours?  You would go over and say something sexy, yet mysterious like, "where did you buy those pants?  I like them but find that corduroy chafes me like sandpaper."  It was simple, beautiful, and markedly awkward.

Things have changed.  Now, I have learned, you go to a loud bar and order overpriced drinks, stew in your misery hoping to find another miserable being.  But do you talk to them?  Oh no!  That's bordering harassment!  Now, you log in to any number of social apps on your phone and communicate with the people digitally.  Did you catch that?  You are sitting in the same bar, like 10 feet away, but you communicate through an app.  Holy hell, I am getting so freakin' old.

Why am I afraid of this?  How could I not be?  I'm basing my search for potentially finding my new mate on the merit of my phone auto-correcting my spelling.  The potential love of my life might block me because I mention that I am "getting over being sick" but actually reads "getting over being a ...."  You see why this causes anxiety?

I'm also afraid to see Mick, my super-pup, getting older.  He's a yellow lab and coming up on his 12th birthday.  For you non-dog people, that's like 247 in human years.  It's natural and a part of life, but twice a day I give him more pills than taken by someone who watches Dr. Oz.  He's been with me since he was 9 months old after being abandoned in a dog run in Brooklyn.  Knowing he is in the final bit of his life freaks me out.

And finally, building out a new clinic with a team of some of the best humans on the face of the earth: scary as hell.  If it was just me in this business and I failed, no problem.  I can dust myself off and return to a life of professional nose-picking spa services.  There's good money in that and work, work that I prided myself in for many years through college.

But having a team adds a whole new layer of hair-losing/hair-graying stress.  If I fail, what happens to them?  If I somehow miss my mark of perfection, surely their lives are ruined and no hope exists for them.  Reasonable assumption, I think.

Side note: if you are reading this and are on said team, please roofie yourself now so you forget what you just read.  Gentle suggestion, but powerful.

That's a scary list, and I haven't even started to tell you about that itchy rash.

So, why would I have started this post by saying that I am also not afraid of anything?  The answer is clear...

I am delusional.  Proudly so.

I might be single forever, or I might not.  Mick will move on to his next journey, perhaps today, perhaps in several years.  Symbio PT will succeed, or it won't.

Regardless what happens with these points, along with the myriad of other fear generators, I will still be me.  I will wake up tomorrow morning, or I wont.  I will still have this precise moment to live fully and experience the miracle that is my every breath.

I will not be afraid that said miraculous breath is tarnished with the aroma of day old coffee.  I will reach boldly for that breath mint and marvel at the profound simplicity of my life!

But here is my biggest fear, and this shit is real.  I am terrified of the following image: me on my death bed many many years from now, surrounded by those I love in my final moments in this reality, and realizing only in that moment that I lived a life unfulfilled because I was too scared to confidently attempt my dreams.  Knowing then, when the time for action has passed, that I missed my opportunity to possibly achieve greatness because I once decided it was safer, less scary, more reasonable to chose one path versus another.

That scares me more deeply than anything else I can conjure up.  Living a life of safety and comfort, because I am afraid, is a life wasted.  I decline that option, thank you.

My dream, the image that makes my eyes well with tears as I write this, is me on that same bed with all the same people, laughing to the point of pain at all the times I tried something and absolutely, without question, completely messed it all up.  Made a total ass of myself.  Totally crashed and burned.

I have come to realize that a full life is not one of safety that is governed by fear, but rather a life of adventure and trial.  A list of experiences, successful or otherwise, that made me face my fear and decide to cower or stand tall.

2015 was a year of transitions, an opportunity to realize that new realities existed.  2016 is a year to confidently march myself into that new reality.  To show the world that I will either succeed or have a hilarious story to tell.

I look forward to telling you that story someday...

I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.
Frank Herbert