Facing Fear
After COVID-19 forced lockdowns across the world, we were forced out of our routines, not knowing how bad things were going to get and if things were ever going to go back to “normal”. We are still in the midst of that unknown. People are losing their lives. Losing their jobs. It’s a scary time but it’s also a time of discovery. About yourself. About those you love.
One night my wife, Alanna, and I were talking about the possibility of playgrounds not opening this summer. How were we going to keep our active five and two year old boys busy? We started to look at play sets (the ones with towers, swings, climbing walls, etc) and quickly realized how expensive they were. One of us said out loud “what if we build one”? Facing your fears and adding in a saw blade, what could go wrong?
I’ve never built any structures in my life. However, my wife and I both took shop class in high school so we were familiar with power tools. Leading up to that, when something was broken our landlord fixed it or after we bought a house we hired someone. So I never had to challenge myself in facing my fear of failure. Everyone knows that failure can go hand in hand with trying something new. When I was growing up, my environment was very heavy criticizsm if I didn’t do something correctly and there was always only one “right” way to do things. So I was reluctant to take on such an undertaking.
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Luckily, my wife is super smart and encouraging. She found the plans online for the bottom of the play structure and on the top, we just kind of winged it. We built the entire thing in one week (which is impressive since we have two kids). Was it easy? No. We messed up and had to redo cuts and drill holes. But the thing that was great? There wasn’t any judging. We worked together to figure it out. And if you made a wrong cut, you just cut it again. And if that didn’t work, thankfully two x fours are only a few dollars a piece. Once the structure was done, we had to stain it. The boys loved it and we were proud.
The biggest things I learned from this is: don’t let fear of failure hold you back. Yes, it’s scary. Yes, you’re not going to do it right the first or twentieth time, but, learning is part of the process. I know that I’m capable of doing anything if I face my fears and have someone there to encourage me. My wife and I discovered we really like woodworking together. Now, instead of buying things for our home we say “maybe we could build it”.
