Feel the fear and go to bed

Oh dear. This weekend I felt the fear and did absolutely nothing. I put the blog up last Wednesday, New Year’s Day, and told the world – ie Facebook – about it on Thursday. Lots of friends, people who I hadn’t heard from in years, got in touch. I got excited. Then I got overwhelmed. I went to bed.

On Friday I asked people if they had suggestions for scary things I could do in my Feel the Fear Month. They did: Dump a friend, telling them why you don’t want them around any more. Write an erotic story and send it to your mother. Streak at a major sporting event. Shave off your hair. The list got more evil and imaginative as the day went on.  I started to panic: What exactly have I taken on here? Why am I doing any of this?

I went back to bed.

Today, Sunday, I told myself to Feel the Fear and Get a Grip, so I have come up with a final, slightly amended list of 20 scary things that I’ll be doing this month. (Note I wrote the list, I didn’t actually do anything on it…) It doesn’t include streaking at Twickenham but it does include stationary nakedness (weird phrase but you’ll see what I mean).  But also it does include the small stuff that my might not be exciting but it bothers me.

Where possible I’ll announce in advance where I’ll be doing them so that you can join in or laugh at me – or not laugh at me, in the case of the stand-up comedy. Which makes me want to puke every time I think about it.

Anyway, if anybody has any ideas or contacts that can help, in practical terms, to make these things happen I’d be really grateful.

Also, a few people have said they’d like to join in with me and do their own Feel the Fear month. That would be brilliant! Not sure what the best way to structure that would be? I’ll put up a post on the Facebook page so that people can declare their fears and if anyone has any suggestions about how else we could do it that would be great.

And finally, thank you very, very much to everybody who looked at the blog and shared it and re-tweeted it. Over the weekend I had 808 visits from 31 different countries – including Korea. Weird and wonderful!

The absolutely final (probably) Feel the Fear list…

1. Sing in front of a crowd
2. Public speaking (Speaker’s corner?!)
3. Stand-up comedy
4. Chat up a guy on the tube
5. Ask out a stranger
6. Pose naked for a photograph or a painting
7. Watch a scary film (haven’t done since Misery scarred me, aged 13)
8. My tax return & spend a day looking through my bank statements
9. Have lunch with Chris Evans
10. Confront someone about something they’ve done to upset me
11. Find out what people think of me (the bad stuff)
12. Ask for a discount in a shop
13. Get the FOUR fillings I need. (Tut, tut)
14. Get the mole on my back checked out
15. Eat offal.
16. Skydive or something daredevil-y (wing-walking?)
17. Dive off a high diving board
18. Burlesque/pole dancing (mortifying)
19. Drive on the motorway
20. Lose my temper (I never do. Ever. I’m too repressed and I’m scared it would make people hate me.)

[easyazon_link asin=”0091907071″ locale=”UK” new_window=”default” nofollow=”default” tag=”hemebl08-21″]Feel The Fear And Do It Anyway: How to Turn Your Fear and Indecision into Confidence and Action[/easyazon_link]