I spent most of the last five days very afraid. I have been working hard at not admitting it; at telling myself to just stop fretting and get back to work. But the fears lurk so that no matter which way I turn it feels like one is ready to claw out of the shadows behind me.
There is a reason that the makers of monster horror flicks try not to give the audience a clear view of the monster. The more time we have to examine the monster, the more we can see the seams in the rubber suit, or the aliasing around the edges of the cgi. The more the audience studies the monster, the less realistic it seems. The monster lurking and springing from the dark edges of the screen is terrifying because the protagonist does no know from whence the next attack will come, nor what shape the attack will take. The monster in the middle of the room can be observed, predicted, out maneuvered, or de-masked. Oh look it wasn’t a monster at all, it was just Mr. Smith in a monster suit. Scooby Doo had it right.
So this morning I took a high powered spotlight and shined it into the corners of my brain. I’m kicked those lurking fears right out into the middle so I could really get a good look at them. I sat down and listed in detail every stray fear that crossed my brain. Every fear about the kids. Every fear about XDM. Every fear about reprinting Under New Management. Every fear about the upcoming book shipping. Every fear about failure. I did not evaluate any of it. I just wrote it all down. Eventually I ran out of things to write down. It took awhile, because the list was long, but I did run out.
The next step was looking at each fear individually. Some of them were so obviously ridiculous that just looking at them banished them. Being afraid I won’t get the laundry done today is simply not worth the emotional energy. (Ha! I’ve demasked you laundry, you can terrorize the Tayler house no more!) Others were not completely ridiculous. These fell into two categories. Things over which I have control and things over which I do not. For the things over which I had control, I then thought through what each thing needed from me, what the worst cases for failure were, and how I would respond to the worst case. These monsters do have teeth, but if I have a plan I’m much less afraid that I’ll get bit. Then there are the things over which I do not have control. For those things, I have to choose as best I can and exercise faith.
The process did not banish all my fears, but they feel much more manageable. Even better, I’ve identified the fact that all sorts of factors in my life have been in flux over the past week. Tasks have been flying at me far faster than I could get them done. This was panic inducing. It made me doubt my ability to accomplish all of the tasks that I have agreed to undertake. But the furious pace will not continue forever. In fact the closing of Sketched Edition ordering has slowed things tremendously. And once I am able to stay ahead of my to do list, I will not be so afraid that I can’t handle the rest of work ahead of me. The settling will also give my inner financial squirrel time to inventory our storage and come to grips with the fact that we no longer need to be in scrambling mode. I keep trying to tell the squirrel that we have money now, but with all the other noise in my head, she doesn’t quite believe me yet.
So there are my monsters in bright light and I am less afraid.