143. Fear factor

For a year I had so many hopes but no real expectations for, 2013 has been a storm full blown tornado in a teacup. All 22 days of it. 

Just before Christmas I was OK  I was fairly comfortable, I was bored. A chance phone call lead to a passion being reignited, an opportunity too good to dismiss, a new contract and office and outlook. I was offered an incredible, and I mean really incredible, freelance role with the client and autonomy and specialism required that I could only have dreamt of previously. And, after a lot of soul searching, 465 hours on the phone to my mum, 23 searches into the logistics and one accountant later I was set. I handed in my notice, I was going to be leaving the team I had spent every day for the last two years with, I wasn't even sure how freelance would work, I spent a lot of time in the disabled loo trying not to panic. I was fine. 

The truth is, I've been in need of a challenge, something to whip me out of my comfort zone and pile the pressure on for a little while now. Not content with coasting I've always had to be top of the class, top of the team, the star pupil with more gold ticks than anyone else.  I'm an ambitious young woman, I want to progress, to earn more, be more, to feel my worth. At some point last year I had stopped chasing this pure unadulterated ambition, sure it was never going to happen anyway, now I had to practice smiling and behaving properly and fitting in with a whole new body of people. Mildly petrifying and don't get me started on sorting out tax, dividends, what on earth is a dividend. 

Suddenly every little piece of this great big 1000 pieced puzzle called Career was slotting in to the right spaces, it was scary but I realised I wasn't losing sleep. Every doubt, and there were many doubts, disappeared and the countdown to my final day in comfortable bliss began. I could do this, simple.

And then yesterday I had called the lift for a midmorning coffee, within seconds of the door closing we lurched and dropped 3 floors. The lift froze and then slipped quietly to the ground floor, I screamed and adopted some obscure brace position come squat, I would genuinely give anything for a copy of the CCTV coverage. My chest burned and I was feeling light headed from the pure fear and adrenalin coursing through my veins and within seconds of stepping onto the ground floor I had passed out. 

In front of, a frankly heaving, reception. In a skirt. 

A mug of sweet tea and a sit down later I was fine, shaken and aching and desperate for a lie down but fine. I had left my job, left my surrogate family and my friends, left my carefully crafted security to create my own venture, I was independent, financially mature, I had made a home for myself, I had moved away from my family, I had moved away from what I thought the rest of my life would be, the people who I thought it would be with. And the only thing that would throw me off, make my heart race and whacking huge spots flutter in front of my eyes and my body fall to the ground was a dodgy elevator?

Maybe I'm braver than I thought after all. Maybe I'll stick to the stairs though, just in case.