One Month Challenge: Facing Fears, Week 1

June 5, 2010 4:00 pm     Posted in Reality  Jill - University of Wisconsin g+ page

[Everyone’s got a vice, a bad habit, something they know they need to change. Unfortunately, everyone also has a million excuses why they just can’t do it. Not anymore. Every month we will be following a different CollegeCandy writer as she takes on a personal challenge. Last month it was Samantha and her valiant attempt at going man-free. This month, we're hanging out with Jill as she faces her greatest fears head on.]


By Jill

When I thought about what I wanted to do for my one-month challenge, so many things came to mind: I could go on a social media diet, I could go on a vegan diet, a debt diet… and on and on it went until I decided I wanted to do something out of the box (and not including the word diet). My birthday is coming up this month (ten days! Woop!) and for the past year, I realized not much has changed. I’m sort of in a rut; in a routine of sorts. I wake up with the intention of working out but hit snooze, go to work, work out, watch bad reality TV, spend too much time on Facebook, go to bed, repeat. It’s boring, yes, but it’s comfortable. And like that sweatshirt I have from freshman year that I still won’t part with, comfortable is sometimes a lot easier and more convenient than the other option.

So to shake things up a bit, I decided this month would be all about living outside my box, confronting my fears and living outside of my comfort zone. I have a list a mile long of things I want to be bold and daring enough to do – some big and some not so big – and I’m sure as the month goes on, things will just pop up forcing me to be uncomfortable for a bit but happier in the long run. I’m hoping facing my fears will get me out of this sticky spot I’m in and force me to embrace the world with some new gusto.

And this week I started small. Very, very small. To you this may not sound scary or uncomfortable at all, but to me it was one large step for mankind. Well for me-kind, and I’ll take it.

This week, I faced my over-the-top, irrational fear of spiders and killed a spider on my window sill all by myself. I contemplated calling my doorman to take care of it, but the humiliation stopped me. Well, that and the fact that I had just promised myself I’d face my fears head on.

Let me clarify: this spider was teeny tiny, but at the very site of it in my bedroom I started squealing like a 10-year-old at a Justin Beiber concert (or a 25-year-old at a Backstreet Boys concert, cough cough). I started pacing around my room and realized I had two options:

1) Leave for work and let the spider be. But what if it crawled over to my bed? And multiplied by a million? And then I would come home from work to a bed FULL of spiders? (This was actually my thought process – clearly this option was no option at all.)
2) Take the challenge, face the fear and kill the itsy bitsy spider who came down the damn water spout (or wherever he came from… What a ridiculous song anyway).

So option two won and with almost an entire roll of toilet paper in my hand, I squealed and screamed as I reached for that spider. But just as I thought I had it, it scurried away (the nerve! Didn’t he realize I was facing a crazy fear here?) and I panicked. Sweat was dripping down my face, I was having heart palpitations and called my mom to yell at her for child abandonment for not being here to kill the spider for me. She didn’t pick up.

So, with no other choice, I took slightly less toilet paper and had at that spider again, this time successfully grabbing it, screaming from my bedroom to my bathroom as I flushed that bad boy down the toilet. Once it was gone, I looked in the mirror, smiled and did a little “go me!” dance in my bathroom.

I still can’t believe I did it!! I can’t tell you how liberated and awesome I feel. I know, it seems so insignificant, but it’s majorly significant for me. And it’s not to say that if a huge spider were to come crawling across my carpet right now (god forbid) I wouldn’t freak out or hesitate, but at least I know I CAN handle it. And if I can muster up the courage to take on that mega fear, who knows what else I can accomplish this month.

I guess we’ll find out. I’ve got a long month ahead of me and I’m excited (and totally scared) to see what’s coming. Join me in shaking things up a bit and share the fears you’re going to tackle in the comments below!

23 Comments on "One Month Challenge: Facing Fears, Week 1"

  1. Lindsay says:
    Sat, 5th Jun 201011:21 am 

    I feel you on the spider fear..I had one crawl underneath my apartment door not too long ago, and lost sight of it the second I stood up..thank goodness for bug-eating pets though..my cats attacked it for me while I perched on my couch.

  2. L says:
    Sat, 5th Jun 201011:52 am 

    i was sorting through my recycling this past week and there was this HUGE barn spider in the bin. I shudder when i think of it.

  3. Diana says:
    Sat, 5th Jun 201012:13 pm 

    I understand how you feel! As far as spiders go, no matter the size, arm's length away is TOO CLOSE! I always have to steel my nerves and smack that sucker with a shoe/vacuum it up with the extension wand on my vacuum before I lose my nerve. Ugh ugh ugh >.< Best of luck on your One Month Challenge!

  4. Ellie says:
    Sat, 5th Jun 201012:27 pm 

    Ironic that I'm reading this just minutes after a huge ant crawled out of the corner of my room, across my bed, and into my school folder….I managed to kill it though, thank goodness. Good for you on facing your fear! I'm living my own One Month Challenge this month. I'm avoiding both Facebook AND Starbucks. Tricky, I know.

  5. Cat says:
    Sat, 5th Jun 201012:30 pm 

    This looks like a great challenge! I can really relate to you… especially about spiders. I feel like I should try to live outside the box this month too. Looking forward to next week!

  6. Kirsten says:
    Sat, 5th Jun 20102:11 pm 

    I totally feel you. I can handle spiders, but its cockroaches that really freak me out. I can't even kill them because of that gross crunch sound. Good luck with your month challenge!

  7. Laura says:
    Sat, 5th Jun 20109:29 pm 

    Good job! That was really inspiring :D Makes me feel like I should kill more of the spiders I see instead of refusing to use what it's by or having the 'don't bother it and it won't bother you' approach if it's far away. Woohoo! <3

  8. A says:
    Sun, 6th Jun 20104:34 am 

    This is a good one month challenge. I try to live outside my box whenever I can!

  9. Meg says:
    Sun, 6th Jun 20107:26 am 

    This is a really cool one month challenge. I look forward to reading about it!

  10. shari says:
    Sun, 6th Jun 201011:46 am 

    i think you mean "at the very *sight* of it"

    bygones.

    i love the backstreet boys line! that was me last week! lol

    looking forward to the rest of the month :)

  11. Janelle says:
    Sun, 6th Jun 20103:07 pm 

    @Kirsten: Don't smash cockroaches! When they are smashed, they release a pheromone that tells other cockroaches nearby to reproduce so you'll end up with more of them. I have to get gloved up and use paper towel and 3 plastic bags along with a shoe to get rid of a cockroach.

  12. natalie says:
    Mon, 7th Jun 201012:14 pm 

    Are you kidding?? Whenever I just HAVE to kill a spider on my own, I don't feel liberated after, I feel completely disgusted! GROSS! I always have to yell for my mom or have my boyfriend come in and kill whatever it is I'm squealing about. I think the solution for me is to never live alone so I'll always have someone there to kill a bug for me ;) haha…But congrats on conquering your fear!

    But nothing is as bad as cockroaches. The warehouse I work at is full of them. Not the tiny black shiny kind. We're talking big, huge brown ones that are at least 4 inches long with twitching antennas. I am afraid of going into work everyday and seriously try and sit at my desk as much as possible without wandering around….eww.

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    Fri, 9th Jul 20103:08 am 

    Backstreet boys is a very popular band during my teenage years, they are great performers too.;–

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