Following Eleanor's Advice

You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, 'I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.' You must do the thing you think you cannot do.
Eleanor Roosevelt

The sky is orange fading to red, and I am full of a quiet joy. The past few days, I've been following Eleanor's advice in a small way, and I feel like I've discovered new wings to fly.

Sometimes it's so hard to face fears, so hard to do the things that really matter to me even when they are small steps, things that nobody else would even care about. When I get to the edge of whatever it is, and I look down at that sheer drop, I want to cling to the status-quo, keep my wings furled and folded even though my heart is longing for the sky. The fear of failure keeps me mute, still.

Now that I've had my little taste of flight, though, I don't think I'm going to be able to fold my wings again. That's the thing about flying; I think it's addictive.