Year of Fear - March

I totally dropped the ball this month for my year of fear and I'm not sure which avenue to wander down in my thoughts, to talk about creative blocks and being kind when they happen or maybe how I was thinking this month would be incredibly easy yet I found myself faced with fear and making a hell of a lot of excuses.  The idea this month was to take portraits in public and as the days started to disappear a constant (nagging!) thought kept reminding me to make this task a priority whilst the other half of my brain told me it wasn't one.  

So my excuses, valid or not included, feeling emotional taxed in my support work job (it happens, usually, for myself, at a 3 year mark with the same client).  Immersing myself into learning about business and feeling drained creativity, having lots of emotions or none at all (I'm partially blaming all the astrological happenings of March!) and just feeling a very low level of motivation (which is odd for myself).  Ben is back from his work hitch today - which feels like a really amazing gift.  In the end I lost track of how long Ben was away for 6+ weeks (?!) everything in March has a tiny haze over it but I really missed hugs and the connection of a conversation that doesn't worry about how strong an internet connection is.

So I'm sending myself a lot of compassion and also for you too, if you found yourself in a similar situation this March.  It happens, it's okay and creativity/love/goodness will come back :)

I thought that my 'jumping into the water' fear (which I'm still diligent keeping up with - bonus points!) would be way harder then any social based fears.  I'm not sure if it was because March was an off month for me or if all my excuses this month were actually more to do with my social fears being crazy high and trying to avoid them at all costs.  I'm interested to see how these next few months pan out. I just wanted to cocoon and be still and not challenge myself personally because I felt challenged externally (if any of that makes sense!).

On a side note, the first week of March I was actually off to a good start and I even managed to go and do something that my 2018 self would have never ever dreamed of doing! Ben had bought a mower and blower (the previous month) off a local guy who fixes and sells second hand equipment.  I got the mower to work fine but the blower's chord wouldn't retract.  We had a whipper snipper that didn't work so I thought I'd go give him the whipper snipper as a peace offering in the hopes he would look at the blower.  I figured Ben has only used the blower once and even though the gentleman mentioned you weren't allowed to bring back equipment I took a big courage breath in and drove over.  The old guy happily took the whipper snipper but didn't offer to fix the blower. He just said to get Ben to look at it when he got home from work.  If I had more courage I would have been more direct but baby steps!

// These photos are actually from the end of January where I was doing a test to see if this could be a potential fear challenge.  Hopefully I'm able to pick the March challenge up again over the year but I'm definitely allowing some deadline breathing room along the way :)