Day 2: What mistakes are you afraid of making?

I have made a lot of mistakes. A LOT of mistakes. So the ice is broken there; I figure mistakes are inevitable and as long as I have my big girl panties on and own them and learn something from them, mistakes are not the end of the world. I mean, sometimes I think a camera crew should follow me around and document the bumbling that I do on a daily basis because I am actually supremely talented at fucking up. I don’t even regret my mistakes most of the time, although two days ago I got out of my car and wasn’t paying attention to my surroundings because I was talking to my daughters and carrying a lot of stuff, and I stepped right into a giant pile of dog shit. This wasn’t one of those incidences where you just wipe the sole of your foot on the grass and carry on, being careful not to wear your shoes in the house or the car without cleaning them off as well as you can. We’re talking ankle-deep into  a shit pit, where my shoe made a sucking noise as I pulled it out, and my entire foot was coated in poop.

That was regrettable.

I think that as I get older I am more afraid of hurting myself because it takes longer and longer to recover. Some days I worry about dropping heavy weights on myself (oh wait, I did that a few years ago) or failing at a lift and dropping a loaded barbell onto my head or neck (I actually did that today – TWICE – and survived to tell about it).

Still, I figure as long as I am the one who has to face the consequences for my mistakes, then it’s okay. The mistakes I really am afraid of making are the ones where someone else has to pay for them…those are bad news. Coincidentally those are the mistakes that I flirt with all day every day at work: balancing clients’ needs within the context of achieving the results they’re after and judging just how best to push them on any given day. So far no one has gotten hurt!

But really? The mistakes I fear the most are of the parenting variety. What if I mess my daughters up so badly that they go forth into adulthood without the tools they need? What if I am not enough to protect them from the cruelties and inequalities in this world? What if they need someone better/harder/richer/more selfless/younger/smarter than me?

What if, what if. I am the one whose insides they squeezed out of so we are all stuck; may as well make the best of it. So I’m gonna quit worrying, take some Advil for my sore neck (from the aforementioned and ill-fated barbell impact) and go to bed. Tomorrow’s mistakes aren’t going to make themselves!