Emerson Trust 30 Challenge: Do What I Am Afraid To Do.

After a sabbatical from the Emerson Trust 30 Challenge, I find my self back in the box, so to speak. As I said in my post, "An Apology", life got in the way of confronting life. Frankly, I wouldn't have it any other way.

Prompt 9 from Mary Jaksch is about confronting that which I am afraid to do, or in this case, write about a topic that I would choose to not write about.

I could blog about bungee jumping or mountain climbing because I would never do either. I remember a former manager of mine saying, "There's a place where it's $99 for 2 bungee jumps." I replied, "Hell, I might jump twice to make $99." He told me, "No, it costs only $99 to jump twice". My response, "You pay to jump off a bridge with a big rubber band tied to your feet? Why would you do that?". He shook his head and walked away. Anyway, it's too simple to write about my fear of doing something corporal that I would indeed never do. There is no personal challenge in that.

I am most afraid of disappointing my family. Make that my wife and kids and marginally my mother. My mother was higher up on the list until I had a wife and kids. It's not that other family member don't matter but in fact other family members don't matter. I wouldn't go out of my way to make them angry, but if any family member other than my wife or kids are disappointed, oh well. In fact, outside of my wife and kids, others are unimportant.

My fear of disappointing wife and kids derives from my near 3 year period of unemployment. My plans are to open a service business to provide personalized life cycle celebrations, serving the secular/unaffiliated community. Failure or failing to bridge into other income producing areas could send everything into hell in a hand basket. My marriage is strong and house still owned but failure could cost both. Living in a box on the street is only marginally better than being dead on the street.  It would create the memories I would never want my kids to have. I'm sure all of us would survive the ordeal and sores would heal. Still, healed sores come with scars that are a constant reminder of the wound. Energy is a limited resource and I fear that I simply don't have the energy to invest in repairing the damage caused by homelessness and divorce. In that light, here's to success in all my future ventures.