Last night, when I was running on the treadmill in the basement, I saw a gigantic eight-legged fiend, scurrying along the wall to my right, and then settling down 6 inches from my arm.
I managed to stifle a rising scream. But that didn’t stop my spine from feeling like it's been doused in ice. Or my heart from jumping into my throat. Or my legs from turning gelatinous and quaky like they’re going to collapse.
I know I’m not alone in the world for my immense fear of spiders. Ron Weasley is a fellow arachniphobe. And this whole summer, my brother has been “at war with the speeders” (so called by him for their Olympic leg activity) as a result of the hole in his window screen that presented an entrance for these unwelcome visitors. There have been many a day when I found him standing on a chair, beating at the ground with a broom, warning me that another speeder is on the loose and advising that I, too, quickly find higher ground. (Isn’t it funny that when we’re terrified, we fail to consider things like the fact that spiders can crawl up just as easily as they can along the floor?)
My story gets worse, though. As I had only half a mile left in my work out, I decided to power through it, arachnid be damned. So I turned my focus back to the treadmill progress display and willed my eyeballs to stay away from the vicinity of the side wall near my arm.
It felt like the longest half mile in the world but I finished.
I victoriously looked back at where the spider sat, and HOLY SHIH-TZU ITS GONE.
This time, I couldn’t help it. I let out a blood curdling 100-decibeler that without a doubt woke the neighbors.
Suddenly it felt like every single part of my body was crawly. My legs, arms, neck, even hair. I started jumping around hitting myself in the head, convinced that the speeder found the opportunity to relocate there while I was speeding along on the treadmill. I must have looked ridiculous.
Theory has it: We’re terrified of things like spiders because they possess some of the “fear factors” that our primate ancestors evolved. These innate fears were developed to quickly identify potential dangers. Historically, our predecessors learned that hairy things and leggy things are dangerous and need to be avoided. So to this day, we have a built-in negative response to those factors. And spiders happen to have a lot of both (1) hairiness and (2) leggy-ness.
I am facing something of a parallel in my working life. I have opportunities to work on direct valuations but I am so afraid of pursuing them. I think internally, I am afraid of failing. During my performance review, when I wanted to indicate my interest in direct investments, I nested it into a section on organizational changes (“Maybe there can be chances in the company for people who work on funds to also help out on a limited basis with direct investments?”) rather than directly coming out and saying, “I want to do work on direct investments.” Maybe because I’d been told early in my career that I don’t have the skills to do them – that I would inevitably fail. So I’d always labeled it as “AVOID” like our early ancestors have done with traits like hairiness and leggy-ness.
But I am working on it. I’m not going to let a few words from when I was 23 dictate what I do and don’t try in my career, and I am most certainly not going to let a couple of spiders scare me out of working out in the basement.
xoxo,
the closing belle
**************************************
BLOGTOBER: Blogging every other day in October!
