Don’t forget to scream
#GLAMBlogClub #June #Fear

My biggest fear as a child was spiders. When I was about 4 years old I came across a Bird Eating Spider on the back of a public toilet door in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea. It was not a fun experience — I was terrified. From then on I have had a fear of spiders, especially the big, hairy ones. I don’t think that this is an unreasonable fear to have had, but there were times when this fear was unreasonable, when it held me back or caused me to run into trouble. Apart from needing other people (thanks Dad!) to get rid of any spiders which had made their way inside, there was one driving lesson which very nearly ended in disaster when I pulled down the visor and a huntsman dropped onto the steering wheel. The scare of the spider was (and still is to be honest) greater than my fear of crashing but it did make me realise that I needed to get over this fear to some degree.
I still don’t like spiders all that much but I am no longer likely to crash a car if one does drop onto me (I hope), and I can — if I absolutely must — get them out of the house without assistance.
Looking back over my life I am made aware of the fact that I have managed to deal with this fear pretty well. This makes me feel more confident about dealing with that other fear I have …

A few months ago I was given a list of approx 30 ‘core values’ and was asked to narrow these down to ten, then three, then one. This was a lot more difficult than it appeared. What word describes you at your core, the values you live by? Community? Loyalty? Love? Trust? Generosity?
Knowing that at any time in our life we may feel differently about what our core values are, I chose Courage. I really dislike being afraid. It is the one thing which holds me back from life more than anything else and I can’t stand the feeling of being afraid and I also don’t like myself very much when I give in to fear.
I am not speaking about scary movies or books — I don’t watch them or read them if I don’t want to! — but more the fear which stops you making the choice which could/would change your life, the fear which just stops you living.

I will often try to do the things I don’t really want to do such as calling back the patron who wants to complain about why we have screens in the children’s area, or presenting at a meeting of my peers and higher management team. I am not necessarily fearful of these things, but I am aware that not doing them would be giving in to a greater fear, an overarching awareness that I am afraid I will never measure up, that I am somehow lacking in some way. The only way I can combat this fear is to pick up the phone, present to my peers, just do the thing.
Recently I made the decision to force change in my life. I love my job but what I really love is what I have been doing for the last 18 months on a secondment and this will be finishing up at the end of August. So I started looking for similar jobs and was lucky enough to be offered an opportunity which is exactly what I want to do. The excitement lasted for a couple of days … then all of a sudden I was terrified. Not just nervous, but truly scared. That little voice of negativity in my head started up and all I could think was why had I done this thing??? Why would you choose to go from somewhere you love, where you are comfortable, where you know pretty much exactly what you need to do and you know you can do it well … to somewhere completely different, where you don’t know anyone, where you are going to have to prove yourself all over again and learn a whole new system and meet new people … and so on. I have never had such a bout of self-doubt before, but then, I have not chosen to put myself in the way of change to such a degree before either.
It took a couple of days for the fear to subside — I am really looking forward to starting my new job — but I still don’t truly understand where it came from. I have never felt this way before. All the reasons I had for making this change are valid and just as good now as they were when I first thought of them but I needed to constantly remind myself of them which made me realise that this fear was a construct of my own making.

Having written it down it seems less of a thing than it was. I had a truly visceral reaction which was just completely out of the blue and not at all the kind of thing I do normally. But now I feel that this fear came about because I am pushing myself in a direction which means leaving somewhere I feel very safe and comfortable, that I care for and I feel cared for in. And that is a scary thing to do. To change. My lizard brain does not understand and would much rather that I stay safe and not do the scary thing.
However, what is even scarier to me than the idea of change is the idea of stagnation. I am more afraid of a lack of movement, of getting stuck, of never getting the opportunity to push myself and grow and learn than I am of trying and failing. That said, failing would really suck. But as I have recently learnt, failing fast is the best way to learn fast and grow as a leader and a human. It’s hard to let go of safety and comfort though!
I guess what I am really afraid of is waking up to a life lacking meaning. It would be so much easier not to care but what kind if life is that? Certainly not a life I can live — especially not in libraries. When you work in the GLAM sector I think it is incredibly important to be passionate and caring about your work, your community and your industry. And when we care, there is always going to be an element of fear. But that’s okay because we can get past fear. Fear isn’t real.
JFK had it pretty much spot on. That said, I reckon Ron Weasley was onto something too…

