The Power of Fear
Never one to back down or not complete a task…I had indeed sailed forth on the sea of social media…but no one said I had to like it. No one also said I couldn’t fear it. Therefore, slowly, the fear of not knowing even how to engage on social media drove me into the arms of a young friend, much better versed in the art of social media than I would ever be.
Not to lag on promises, I promptly promised her a 25% cut of whatever I earned from book 1, if ever. I further went and had her purchase a MacBook Pro on my dime…since we had to set up a website, a Facebook business page…blah, blah, blah.
Thrilled to have a Mac computer land on her lap, literally from the sky, my young friend promptly adopted the computer for her own use, and the use of her teenage children.
Meanwhile, every time the subject of designing a website for me came up, she was “busy.”
As if that wasn’t offensive enough, along the way…inspired by the contents of my book, she picked up a new dream…to become a life insurance agent. And this, of course, in addition to her full time job and five children.
Now anyone reading this blog is thinking…so what possessed Raya to choose such a busy person to begin with, never mind her new insurance agenting dream?
The answer is FEAR. The fear of engaging on social media. Such was my fear, that I let it blind me into believing that my young friend could not only help me, but that she would adopt my book dream as her own and ride the tide with me. That she would invest in my dream like I did, believe as much in my earnings of one dollar, and treat it with the same seriousness as with earning a million dollars some day.
And I clung to my dream through thick and thin, assuring myself that the “next time” she would shape up…because believing that was easier than engaging in the social media game myself.
But people will continue to be who they always were, no matter how many attribute crowns you jam on their heads…and my dear young friend was no different. In the span of four months she had used my MacBook Pro for a thousand personal projects. It was now her favorite toy. She had bought a protector for it and a mouse too…but the only time we had gotten together to design my webpage was after she blew me off the second time…and I agreed to her alternate date plan.
It was a wonderful and perfect date. Her younger kids were in daycare…for the time being, she had shelved her federal job with the excuse of “young children at home,” since no one was coming to check on her, so we spent the seven glorious hours just on me…and I was over-the-moon happy. So happy, in fact, that I spent two of my seven precious hours explaining to her how either she had to commit to taking this business venture seriously, or else there was no point in us being “partners.” At this point, high on happiness, I was willing to turn a big blind eye on the fact that it was going on five months since I had bought the darn computer, and I still didn’t have a website. Notwithstanding, during the same time, my young friend had taken a month’s worth of online classes to become an insurance agent, plus taken an exam to become certified…and I was still sucking my thumb on most of my book related projects. Why? Because in my mind I “couldn’t do these things.”
I guess I woke up to my reality the third instance she blew me off, after I had waited for the tenth time for the “perfect” day when her smaller kids would be in daycare. FYI, that day her kids were in daycare…but by this juncture she was in “training” to become an insurance agent…and on the day she had promised to finish my website with me, she needed to go get pics taken for her name card. Of course, when her trainer suggested this date the day before, my dear friend was so excited with the prospect of a second career, it didn’t even cross her mind to say she had a previous engagement. It was so much easier to blow off fluffy old Raya who was always a pushover.
That night I was so angry, I didn’t sleep a wink. But more than being angry with my friend, I was angry with myself for choosing her. Now ridden by a worse fear that she had bought the computer…albeit with my debit card, but I didn’t even have a receipt to prove that the blessed computer was mine. What if she refused to give the computer back to me? That would mean I had just done myself out of roughly 3000 dollars. So what was I going to do about it? But hey, it was only 1:00 a.m.: I had seven more hours to stew over this snarl before I could act on any decision.
Has the fear of something so stupid ever put you in such a no-win situation?
