Fear Journal

The new color of my kitchen--a bright, yellowish green

For my birthday and Christmas this year, I asked for nothing but money.  See, I have wanted to paint my living room, kitchen and hallway for years but haven't gotten around to it.  Actually, that's not true.  It's more like just the idea of painting all that myself overwhelms me and makes me content to stare at dings in the walls, white lines up the stairs (sharpee marker drawing cleaned up with a magic eraser takes the dye off wallpaper), peeling wallpaper in the kitchen.  This year I decided enough was enough and I am going to hire it done.

Now that I have the money and have called a painter, I have this dilemma.  What colors should I paint the walls???  Oh my should this not be a decision a person like me should have to make.  Indecision is my middle name.  Should the living room be this shade of white, or this shade of white. or maybe one of these other hundred shades of white???  What about the kitchen?  I was thinking blue but Hubby says he hates blue, so we're left with sticking with green like we already have.  Hubby wants a sage color (basically what we already have now) but I want to go brighter.  But what if it doesn't look good?  Would a bright green be too much?

I was sitting on the floor of my kitchen tonight stripping away the wallpaper and thinking about paint colors when a thought came into my head:  "This is a really stupid thing to stress over.  Stop trying to play it safe and go with the color you really want.  If a bright green makes you happy then go with it."

Decisions can be so difficult for me because I am afraid to make the wrong one.  I make up my mind, but then waffle for a while because maybe something else is a better idea.  Play it safe or go with what I want?  Take the same old road or take a risk and go a new way?

I've been praying for a while now about what I should focus on for this coming year, which starts in about...an hour and twenty minutes.  I was looking at a few journals online that had names like "Who I Am" and "Love Journal" and "Happiness Journal" when an idea hit me.

I should write a Fear Journal.

Not a journal listing all my fears, but a journal that chronicles all the times that I face my fears and do something.  The times when I do things afraid.  Or when I do things that used to make me afraid but now don't.  Or when I want to do something but end up chickening out.

I was thinking about my life a few years ago and how I lived in a pretty constant state of fear.  Fear held me back from doing just about everything.  I never stayed home alone overnight, I was too afraid to go to new places by myself, trying to find a new church was incredibly stressful for me with the whole meeting new people and unknown of the church, I feared for my kids way beyond healthy, I had to check the locks on my house more than once every night before going to bed.  I could go on.

That isn't me anymore.  I am so far removed from that person today that when I looked in the mirror a few weeks ago, I was struck with the thought that I don't even know who that girl is looking back at me.  She is a stranger.  She does things that she never did before.  She told her daughter just the other day that she wanted to go bungee jumping just because it was scary and she wanted to do scary things.  She talks to strangers and friends alike without silently sweating bullets inside.  She lets her kids play outside without fearing they will be kidnapped.  She decides to paint her kitchen bright green and doesn't let her fears of making a mistake sway her.

A new museum in another town--
A new place used to be too stressful for me

I took the kids to Chicago without my Hubby for the first day
He ended up getting the time off and joined us later but I agreed
to go on the vacation thinking he wouldn't be there

Me bouncing on hippity hops and racing the kids instead of
sitting on the sidelines because I didn't want to look stupid
Yes, this is the infamous source of my back pain
that has completely cleared up as of a week ago

Vacationing at the lake house--just the kids and me

So 2014--You will be hearing even more from me about my Fear Journal project.  About my many many feats of bravery, and possibly with a side dish of stupidity.

Bring on the New Year!