Year of Fear - January

I hopped across the rocks to carefully position the camera on the other side. There's this moment where I almost slip and I tell myself to slow down and be calm. My heart is pounding, I have an instant headache, a sudden urge to visit the bathroom and all because I'm really afraid to do the next thing coming.

Okay, lets do a little catch up before I literally dive in. Firstly, some perspective, I never put my head under in the shower. To wash my hair I just lean back to rinse never letting the water run over my eyes. I've developed a set of swimming styles that let me avoid putting my head under, which means I feel like a really inadequate swimmer and I'm also scared of heights. All of this means, when I go for a swim I find the spot closest to the water, slide my body in (slowly!) and make sure my head stays well above. When I thought about doing a year of fear project, jumping into water was a non-brainer, a definite fear for me.

This Summer (in Australia) we've been swimming in our local water hole daily and I've been talking about my fear challenge and thinking about which rock I would jump off. I'd also began to pay attention when Ben and Lowy would jump in, asking questions and getting some solid pointers. Somewhere around the end of December I did my first mini jump in preparation which was utterly awful, I didn't hold my nose, I jumped in a weird, forward-leaning, style which meant I had water go up in places it shouldn't. Ben and Lowy suggested I try not to replicate whatever style I performed during that mini jump. When the first of January rolled around I chose a slightly higher position to jump from but this time, my brain decided mid-way through the jump that I actually didn't want to jump which resulted in an especially uncool jump style. Ben told me what I did, was probably the only thing I could do that would result in being hurt, oh yeah and my boobs didn't enjoy the landing (tighter swimmers next time!). Which brings us to today's jump (or at least from when these notes were written!) where I went down by myself, set up my new camera and came back around to do my jump. I did a lot of pacing, playing with my ear buds before I yelled out “year of fear” and committed to diving into nature knowing she had my back. Guess what? It went really well, it felt super amazing after I had jumped to then swim up to the surface and open my eyes in the process (goggles help!) a slow stretched out moment of bravery. As I surfaced I turned to face the camera and gave two thumbs up. I or you will never see those glorious two thumbs up because when I went to retrieve the camera it had only recorded 5 seconds.

I've since jumped this rock or jumps like it almost everyday of January. We have a handful of swimming holes we rotate and so the footage below is Ben recording the day after the failed 5 seconds of footage. To look back on the clip is completely laughable and so crazy to think I was (or still am) scared to even just step into the water. I've set higher jump goals for the year and one really really big jump that I have given myself till December to concur which I'll get Ben to film when I do it. Mostly I'm already so hugely proud of myself. Even though my step down is laughable it's this really big deal to me and I'm proud for literally stepping through and past what was holding me back previously

So the year of fear, is my new monthly challenge. I'm still trying to piece together what fear I'll pick each month, I already have a handful of ideas and realising a lot of my fears are based in social interactions so it will probably fall heavily into that scary social anxiety arena – eep!

Wish me luck!