I hope you’ve been following Blair Braverman as much as I have. She writes all the time over on her Twitter channel about her adventures as a musher, training, caring for, and racing sled dogs. Just this week, she finished the epic Iditarod! Can’t wait for the tweets about her stories to start coming in (after she’s rested).
I still think about this article she wrote, How to Teach a Dog to Be Brave. Bravery has been on my mind lately: I’m job hunting, and continuing to make myself vulnerable and get invested in a job I want only to not know whether I’ll get it is an act of bravery. My partner Hunter and I are also going through a process of being recognized as more formal community leaders in the leather/BDSM worlds, and that, too, has been requiring bravery.
And I’m thinking about failure, shame, embarrassment. What does it mean to fail something? There is much talk of “failing forward,” “failing big,” and how much failure is not a bad thing — but what about my personal relationships to that?
Blair writes:
What I’ve learned through years of blizzards and frostbite and broken headlamps, tangles and wolves and splintered sleds, is that whatever happens, I’ll find a way to handle it. I can’t predict or control problems, but I have a darn good track record for protecting my team and coming out the other end. Sometimes I think that’s as close to real courage as I’m going to get.
I’m thinking of Blair’s words as I write another cover letter, contact another mutual connection on LinkedIn. Whatever happens, I’ll find a way to handle it. What a lovely thing to trust, when (if) I can do that.
Happy spring,
Zed
PS: Save the date for Portals of Pleasure 2019! July 24-28 near Albuquerque, New Mexico. Registration will open in April.