Am I Afraid to Fall... Or Am I Afraid to Fly?

I was flying my plane when I took this picture in March.

Remember in Back to the Future, when George McFly was writing his science fiction stories in 1955, and Marty was taken aback that the teenage version of his old man was a writer?  Remember how he asked George why he never let anybody else read his writing?  And George McFly said, "Oh...you know... I'm afraid of... rejection..."

Friends, if you've ever heard me say that, in even a very George McFly voice, you can go ahead and honk.  I won't be upset.  Those words come flying out of my mouth with less than zero effort. 

But the thing is, when I'm really pressed to think about it, am I really afraid of the rejection?  I'm rejected all the time. I've sent work out and been told it wasn't what was being looked for at this time.  I've pitched ideas and been told "no." 

Then I change the word "rejection" to "failure," to see if that's what has me so snake-bit, and again, I'm not so sure.  When I was younger, I definitely would have told you I was afraid of failing.  Failing algebra tests got me grounded.  If it'd have failed my driving test, I wouldn't have had the freedom to drive.  Failure meant shame, shame, shame to me in the first two decades of my life.  Failing would make me just about want to die.

But now the thing is this- I failed my check-ride for my pilot's license the first time I took it.  A checkride is the aviation equivalent of the Road Test.  I made a bad decision that in real life could have cost me my life, and I failed that test.  I failed it hard.  And I melted down, threw a little tantrum.  I'm not proud of that at all.  I was so ashamed of failing the test, and I was even more ashamed of the way I acted afterward that I thought about not even calling the examiner back to try the test again.  My instructor and my airport friends gave me their shoulders to cry on, and then let me know in no uncertain terms that my time for crying was over, I needed to get over myself, and they all took a turn at giving me a swift kick in the ass to get me back on track.

I failed that time, but I had a chance at redemption.  I got a chance to apologize to the examiner, who was very understanding about the whole thing.  He said I was "very high-strung."  I could not argue with that.  I was very high strung when I made that first impression on him.  My second check-ride was a rip-roaring success.  It was fun, even.

And as it turns out, not only did I not die from failing, but the lessons I learned from failing saved my life. 

Huh. 

Maybe I've been telling myself the wrong story this whole time.  I seem to be Just Fine with rejection.  If I were really afraid of being rejected, seven-eighths of what I write on this blog would not meet your eyes, Friends.  If I were really afraid of letting people read my work for fear of being vulnerable or baring too much of my soul... well, hell, hasn't that ship sailed right out of the harbor?  I thought it would hurt, letting people know how much I struggle with ... everything.  Now that it's out  there, I realize it was hurting me worse to keep it all to myself behind that infamous Frozen Smile.

And the failure. I fail all the time.  The check-ride was the biggest and flashiest failure.  I still think I came out of that deal-e-oh ahead. But my more minor failures, of which there are many, on a daily basis, even, I firmly believe that when I eff something up really good and fail, at least I've learned how NOT to do the thing next time.  Sometimes I fail on purpose, in order to grow- in the weight-room, for instance.  I'll lift until my muscles fail, and then they get to heal and grow.  That is failure that I control.  I've been telling myself that failure is not an option, and those are brave-sounding words, but I think what they really mean is that failure is not an option; it's the only way to grow and get to where you want to be.  I've told myself that failure is shameful.  I could just *die* from it!

Yet, here I still stand. 

I don't think it's the looming of Failure and Rejection, the fear to Fall that's held me back all this time, Friends.  I don't.  Are you ready for this?  Are you sitting down?

I think the thing holding me back all this time is that I'm afraid to Fly.

Wouldja get a load of this broad?  Afraid to fly?  Afraid to succeed?  What in the actual hell is wrong with this picture?  Who in their right mind is afraid to succeed?  Isn't that the whole point?  Isn't it?

But here's this thing.  I know how to take rejection and failure.  I take a rejection, I fail, and I shrug and say, "I'll try again another time, maybe."  "I'll approach this another way."  I'll walk away from that with a lesson.  I'll be a little wiser.  But otherwise, nothing else really changes.  I'm still more or less the same.  My income is the same.  My life is the same.  My schedule and routines are the same.  Life doesn't change radically if I'm rejected or if I fail.  And that's great, because what do humans hate the most?  Change.  What threatens our sense of security, stability, connectedness?  Change.

I sure can spin Success up into something pretty negative, too.  I point to flying the airplane.  There was something I really wanted to do, so I pursued it and put in the work and practiced and learned all I could about flying an aluminum machine.  And I got it.  I succeeded.  I passed that test (eventually).  And it almost killed me the day I had my engine-out.  Didn't it?  I mean, the plane and I made it safe and unscathed back to the runway... just.  There was no physical trauma to either of us.  But I had time to let myself go to some pretty dark places on the way down.  I figured I'd be a fiery blotch on the giant 28 painted on the approach end of the runway.  There's some success for ya.

And this writing thing.  What if.  What if, what if what if?  Say I do write a thing, and it's successful.  What would that do to my family?  Would I still be able to be so available to help my husband with things that have to do with his business, or would I have to be more preoccupied with promoting or following up whatever masterwork of heartbreaking genius I place at the world's feet?  Would I still be able to be involved at my daughter's school if I'm promoting a book?  What about my workout routine if I had to be on the road?  What would people think of me?  Would I still fit here, if I succeeded?  Would people be nervous that they might recognize themselves- real or imagined- in the things I write?  Would people think I had to live through the stuff I write for my characters?  (the answer here is no- sometimes, writers live it, but writers are creatures of imagination.  Especially fiction writers. We can empathize and imagine and spool out a story without having lived the life we're writing.  Sometimes we draw characters from life, but if we're smart, we make composites; we take just elements of real people we know, and smoosh them all together with elements of other real people we know, and then we add a whole bunch of imagination and caulk and maybe some epoxy.  The real people in our lives inspire us, but most of us try not to do one-to-one transliterations... unless we're writing nonfiction, and then we can't be so imaginationy.  In which case you'd be contacted about whether it's okay or not to use your story, your words, your experience, if at all possible.)

If I did something really rad, and it was ridiculously successful, or even moderately successful, would I still fit within the frame of my family?  Would I be forcing change on them, or a whole bunch of unwanted attention on them because of my selfish quest for fulfillment?

At least I know I fit in the box I live in right now.  It isn't necessarily exciting.  I don't feel especially wonderful about it.  But at least things are stable.  I can go on like this, probably.  I don't need to be bigger.  I don't need to upend everybody else in my life to accommodate me following my dreams.

Boxes, though.  Don't they put us in boxes when we die?  Even if we're going on Team Extra-Crispy and being scattered to the four winds?  There's a point we all wind up in a box.  Sheesh.  That took a turn for the dark and airless, didn't it? 

That's what it's like, living in a damn box before you're dead.  Isn't it.

So I started this blog back up.  And that was pretty scary for me, at this point in my life.  Before, I'd write it, and it'd just be throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what stuck.  Not a lot of people paid much attention.  They paid attention to my Daily Zoe blog, because that was stories about my cute little kid, or stories told from what I imagined her perspective was.  I took a little shit for that, too, from some, because they saw it as an invasion of her privacy, of her very person, since she didn't consent to me writing about her like that.  I didn't mean it to be an invasion.  I saw it as a scrapbook on steroids, something we'd look back at when she's older, and we'll laugh and laugh.  Most people loved it, but it was those with the heavy criticism, those who said, with a little glee in their eyes, "Oooooh, she is going to HATE you when she's older!"  That got to me. 

So there's that ball of wax. What if people read me?  What if they listen when I speak (or write)?  What if they hate what I'm saying?

You know, some will.  I get the occasional message to the tune of "What were you thinking?!" in my inbox after a particularly lay-it-on-the-line piece.  I'm learning to get under the reaction of "What were you thinking?!" and not take that so personally. 

I also get a lot of messages of support.  People are reading me.  People are "hearing" me and "listening."  It's a little scary sometimes.  I love hearing how the things I write touch or affect the people who take the time to read me.  Putting myself and my work out there like this IS scary.

Yet here I still stand.

Part of the exhilaration of flying is feeling and tasting the fear that comes with defying gravity... and doing it anyway. 

So here I go!