You may know that my brother Greg has been doing one scary thing a day for a year, and he just finished! Congrats! To celebrate he made a compilation video summarizing what he did and put it on Reddit. It ended up on the front page, and now he’s getting press like crazy!
He’s gotten press from Huffington Post (who had also mentioned his No Pants on Metro post), The Daily What, and elsewhere. And today – Yahoo news! For now at least, his video is on the front page under Must See Videos.
He’s right up there with Cozy the 40-pound cat.
I got to do a couple of scary things with Greg over the year. I sat in the audience while he read at Mortified San Francisco, where everyone kept looking at me while he talked about reading my diary as a kid (guess what, I already know!) and bullied encouraged him to get his photo taken at Hot Cookie in the Castro.
I’m totally proud of him and am living vicariously through his fame.
More importantly, his project inspired me to start doing more scary things, such as battling my driving phobia and getting behind the wheel for the first time in years (so it was a go-cart, a license was still required so there); breaking out of my shy shell and being more social; and learning krav maga.
Today I’m reminded and re-inspired. It’s easy to get caught up in the day to day, and to use excuses like “I’m too busy” or “It’s not a big deal” to not do scray things. For instance, this week at AWP, I should have been a lot more social (more on that in another post), and while I did meet a few new people, I could have done a lot more.
While I don’t think I’ll be doing a scary thing every day, realizing when I’m entering a “scary” situtation and being more systematic about breaking out of my shell are good first steps to conquering my fears.
Thanks, Greg, for reminding me of that.