" I scared myself into it."

Last weekend, Mike and I attended a small speculative fiction/media conference called Diversicon. One of the reasons that the weekend was so fantastic is that the author who was the guest of honor was extremely bright and excelled at expressing herself, without taking herself too seriously. Her name is Kay Kenyon and I am greatly enjoying the first book in her "The Entire and The Rose" series.

One of the panel discussions was an interview with Kay. Her answer to one of the questions is sticking with me. When she was asked why she started writing fiction, her reply was "I scared myself into it." She elaborated by explaining that she didn't want to be an old woman who was being asked by her grandchildren why she hadn't done that thing she was always talking about.

Of course, one way to avoid this event would be to keep one's dreams and goals to oneself. Not a realistic solution for most of us.

In conjunction with Kay's thought lodging itself in my brain, has been a realization that an idea I had learned from Wayne Dyer may not always be as good as I originally thought it was. I've forgotten the name of the PBS special where he talked about the children's song, "Row, Row, Row Your Boat". I do remember that he emphasized two main concepts that should serve as guiding principles out of that song. One guiding principle was to row your boat, not someone else's. And the second principle was to row it gently down, the stream; not aggressively upstream.

I was in the throes of recovering from perfectionism at the time and those concepts stuck with me; and actually helped me quite a bit. However, I've lately had the realization that there are times when one's greater good and happiness are going to require a strenous row against one's natural current.

And I guess that's why we have to scare ourselves into some of the goals and dreams that we have. Turning your boat around from what's been leisurely and seemingly easy requires the strong motivator of fear.

My theory is that our leisurely row downstream only felt that way and that once we actually work toward our dream, we might find that we don't even have to row.