My Big Risk for the Week

The lesson in The Joy Diet this past week was about “Risk”, and we were instructed to “Choose any scary goal. Name an action step you’ve devised for obtaining one of your heart’s desires. Make sure that you really want this to happen, and that it really scares you.” I did this. I chose an action step towards my biggest desire right now.

However, the instructions also stated that at least once a day we were to “Take the smallest scary step possible.”  This I did not really do.  Too many concerns and demands took precedence and my week was fraught with other activities.  For one, early in the week I learned that my youngest little grand-daughter landed in the hospital with a diagnosis of Type 1 Diabetes (Juvenile Diabetes), which totally threw me for a loop.  I spent Wednesday at the hospital with her and the family and then most of Friday at their home trying to be of help to my daughter-in-law, while she sorted out her daughter’s new diet regime, glucose testing and insulin injection schedule, in addition to the normal demands of running a household with three active children.  I just had a really tough time coming to terms with this and continue to stay on top of my own goals for the week.

I have spent enough time feeling so bad, that I could not bring myself to pay much attention to the lessons this week.  I won’t go into berating myself about it any longer.  I considered whether or not to drop out of the group, as it has seemed that my time feels too divided now between so many other demands.  In the end, I decided that I wanted to participate because I thought I could learn something, so I will continue to read, do the chapter exercises, and post as much as I am able.

One thing I will do today to take that daily risk, is to state here in a public space what my project is that has become my biggest desire.  It has to do with being recognized for my work and being paid for it also.  Here goes. (Deep breath!)

For the past 8 or 9 months, I have been working on creating a  set of Angel Messenger Cards which one can use to receive a positive message to help uplift and support us in our daily journeys. I have painted the angels, put them in a card format, named them, and written the text that will accompany them with their meanings and how to read them.  Now I want to publish them, so my task is to start contacting other card publishers and ask them to look at my deck for possible publication.  My daily action would be to write a letter each day to a new publisher asking for them to consider publishing my deck.

For some reason, this scares me silly! Even writing about this now and voicing what my desire is (to be a published author and artist of them) scares me.  The risk for me is that people may not like my cards or think they are not good enough to be published, that the art or the writing is not good enough. My critical mind says to me, “How dare I consider that I am good enough to do this?!”  I know I just have to get over it, and take the steps, yet I have been procrastinating and hesitating.  The longer I put it off, the harder it is to get into motion. 

So that is what I have been struggling with these past few weeks. I would love comments, suggestions, anything.  I truly want to start this process and right now I feel totally out of my depth.  Already I feel totally exposed.  Am I being silly?

Arlene

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