Jenny V Music

Journal #45: Day Three… Man Overboard!

Join the journey with meJen’s 2015 Musical Vision Quest RocketHub Campaign!

I opened up a fortune cookie the other day and it said…

“Do the things you fear and the death of fear is certain.”

Something inside me said, “tape this to your MacBook Pro”, which I immediately did! Then it got me thinking about one of the most petrifying moments of my life. It was back in college when I was doing a semester at Sonoma State University to broaden my horizons. As I took a moment to fully breathe in that experience, it hit me. “I gotta share this.” So here it is.

45_Journal_Man Overboard

No, you are not mistaken, that tiny head in the water is ME. A little note about the “grades” involved in white water rafting. It goes from 1 to 6. One being the lowest and 6 being one hell of a ride! Well, the rapids were only scheduled to be grade 1, possibly 2, which I was totally fine with. Unfortunately, you can’t control Mother Nature, and there was a storm the day before. They decided not to cancel the two day camping and white water rafting adventure and the rest is history… as you’ll see…

All was going well until we approached, “Satan’s Cesspool”. They warned us about this rapid beforehand. The goal was to lean into the boat and row very fast to get through this insane part of the journey. Well, that was a great plan but the rapids were just too strong and I lost balance and fell out of the boat. The team was able to grab the other person that went overboard pretty quickly. I, on the other hand, was too far gone. While fear rushed fully through my veins, I stayed as calm as I could. I repeated “the rules” they’d given us in my head. ONE…Stay calm. CHECK. TWO… Raise your legs up horizontally in the water so any large rocks in the rapids will not beak your legs. Are you kidding me! CHECK. THREE… PRAY, PRAY, PRAY. This rule I added myself. CHECK.

As scared as I was, I wasn’t gonna give up. I just remember praying and hoping “the rules” would save me! After what felt like a lifetime, I was finally rescued and returned inside the raft. Facing death eye to eye gave me a clear understanding of what I needed to do to make it out alive; face the fear and follow “the rules”.

And as I am now on this new 48 day adventure surrounding my musical vision quest RocketHub campaign, it’s like I’m in those rapids again. But this time, it’s Level 6. There is a lot of fear going on inside me. That’s for sure! Fear that could easily cause me to self-sabotage this amazing opportunity and experience. I’m human after all. That’s what we humans do. We mess up really great things to stay in our comfort zone. But I have that fortune taped to my computer. “Do the things you fear and the death of fear is certain.” I will face the fears each day and I will simply follow “the rules” and I will look back in the future and say, “Wow, what an experience that was! I’m really happy I didn’t let fear get me down!”

More to come…

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