A break in the clouds
Because the fear course has nearly killed me
Do you know what it’s like to be almost killed by something you well and truly love?
I imagine it’s like being sat on by a horse you adore. You feel the life squeezing out of you as the world turns black and it feels kind of weird to be so stifled by something you love so much.
That’s how I was feeling around about October time.
Like I was being suffocated by a horse sitting on me. A horse of whom I was incredibly proud and incredibly fond, but one who was just sitting on me, squashing the air out of my lungs while I expired, smiling, underneath the weight of it all.
That’s the Fear Course my friends.
It’s been the one thing that has scoffed up most of my hours since this time last year.
In that year, it’s consumed over 825 hours already. I expect to spend another 300 more in creation.
Almost 16 hours per week writing. That’s been all day Sunday and a few hours here and there during the week.
I’m also smiling because I’m the one who goes on about the optimism bias with my clients and colleagues all the time.
‘Set another 6 weeks aside for it!’
‘Take your deadline and double the amount of time it will take!’
‘If you think it will take you 12 weeks to sort this, double it!’
‘Oh, that’s your optimism bias at work!’
You know, that lovely bias that gets in the way of all our attempts to budget. The reason why railways take 2x as long and absorb 7x the cash assigned to building them. The reason Notre Dame was supposed to be finished by December 2024, but now conservative estimates put it at 2028… The International Space Station was estimated to cost seventeen billion dollars and it really cost a hundred and sixty billion…
That bias.
That’s the bias that put me underneath the horse in the first place.
‘It’ll be fine!’ that bias said.
‘You can take a horse sitting on you, for sure!’
‘You go, girl!’
and so on.
I had plans for last April I’ve still yet to complete. And as I look at my calendar for April 2026, I’m desperately hoping this is the year I’ll get to do them.
I had things I wanted to have done by the year end, and the Fear course has sat on them all as well.
That sounds awfully full of resentment, and it isn’t, at all.
I’m as tender and fond as can be of being squished by that horse.
I can honestly say that every minute of it to date has been delicious. It feels like a massive, massive exhalation of things I’ve been trying for ten years to say. Yesterday, I recorded a session on noise phobia that simply slipped out (well, took 11 hours to plan, write, create, present, record, tidy and upload) and today, one on habituation in practice. It’s crystallising everything I’ve felt in my bones over the last ten years.
Listening back to the sessions, I’m like, ‘who IS she?!’ and also a lot ‘well done!’
Don’t blame me for a little self-congratulatory punch in the arm there.
I’m just hoping the thirty people doing the course are enjoying it as much as I am in writing it, that it brings them the clarity that it’s bringing me. Can you imagine how awful that would be, me thinking I’ve done this ace thing and everyone’s like:
So I haven’t minded one iota being squished by a large Percheron. She ain’t nimble and she ain’t sleek, but she pulls her weight.
Even so, she’ll have been 20 months in the making from start to finish.
20 months where I’ve been barely functional.
My tiny yard looks like a weedy bombsite. Lidy’s not done anything fun since about last May. My doctor is going to throw a blue fit when I go in and try and tell her about my 87 different ailments. I’ve got at least three dentist appointments to pick up, 103 walks I’ve been meaning to do, bed linen to wash, carpets to clean. My eyesight has changed that much in the writing of it that I might as well have asked to be sponsored by Vision Express.
And then there’s all my big plans.
Plus, I really, really, really want to get some headspace so I can throw out freebies next year; I want to just have a year where I do nothing but free stuff. Free downloads. Free videos. Stupid reels. Funny posts. Sensible posts. Guides. Website stuff. Free webinars.
I reckon the horse will get up off me around about mid-March. That’s with my optimism bias. Truthfully, it’s getting a bit easier being crushed under her weight as long as I don’t try to think about all the things I’m missing out on as she pins me down and kills me softly.
I’d planned to right into writing the aggression or reactivity course. They’ll be small because mostly they’re resolved in the frustration, responsiveness & fear courses. But even so. That was my plan. Aggression 2026. Reactivity 2027. Shelter & rescue stuff 2028. Maybe some stuff on canine ethology and heritable behaviours. Since I’ve been writing them all since 2021 and planning them all since 2018, it feels like it’s been a hot minute.
So 2026 will be a breather.
The optimistic bias in me says the others will be a breeze to write.
Then some wisecracker said I should write one on learning & behaviour. I think they are just enjoying seeing me getting squished under a horse to be honest.
Anyway, I’m busy making 2026 plans regardless of the fact I’ll still have 300+ hours to go in the new year, and this will take me up to March at least. I so wanted to tidy up the Frustration course, but I’m not even sure I’ll have the stamina. We’ll see.
My new year won’t really start until the final plenary is recorded and the feedback forms are uploaded, but it still feels like it’s manageable, with 75% in the bag.
I’m kidding myself, aren’t I?
That optimism bias buoying me up as if I’m not being physically crushed by a horse. I’ve got hundreds of post-its covering my wall with things still to be fitted in, to be written, to be accounted for. Some of them have long since faded or no longer mean anything to me. Some of them contain multitudinous complex ideas in a tiny post-it sized space.
So it won’t be done perfectly. Not as perfectly as I’d like.
And that’s fine.
I suspect by around March, I’ll be well and truly ready to get that horse off of me and I’ll run around like my dog Tilly did when I’d shaved her fur off - all liberated and free.
Then I’ll look at the other things I’d really like to do - those smaller ponies I hope won’t crush me in quite the same way. The problem is that they’re all so very tantalising and feel so very important.
If you’re in the same boat, sitting under a fond and lovable horse and hoping they’ll get off you some time soon to let you breathe, I hope you’re getting a little rest over the holiday season.
Replenishment, recuperation and breathing all very much essential this week!
PS you absolutely know I’ll be trying to do a dance when I’m finally out from under there, but I feel like most of my muscles will have atrophied and the only thing left will be a small spark in a lonely neuron or two.