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Surprise!

It’s Monday, and here I am, sneakily publishing a Fear, Exposed entry, which usually happens on Tuesdays.  Living on the edge–I know.  But.  I have a really good reason.  She’s wildly charasmatic.  She’s fierce, yet delicate.  She’s got unparalleled wisdom! acumen! intuition! flair! double! exclamation! point! emblazened all over every soul-tugging word that she writes.  So of course, it’s no surprise that first and foremost, she’s a writer.  (And one that I–ahem–very much admire.)  But she’s not just any writer; no, she’s so much more than that.  On the surface, her wildly popular blog, Cleavage, talks about the three things that all of us want more of–sex, money and meaning.  But at it’s core?  Her blog stands as testimony to the human experience as large, through which she is not just a writer, but she’s an illuminato, an intelligentsia, a bright, shining savant, thinker & loyal explorer of what it truly means to be alive in this crazy world. In a way, you could almost call her a social anthropologist–and quite possibly the world’s sexiest one at that.  No, she is not just a writer. Far from it.  At the end of the day, she, my friends, is Kelly Diels. And if you’re wondering why I’ve chosen to publish this on a Monday, instead of a Tuesday?  Well, you’ll just have to read to the end to find out.

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Ashley Ambirge pissed me off.

It’s not because she’s hot (she is). It’s not because we’re in the same business and presumably competitors. (I say pfffffft to competition and yes to loved-up coopertition.) It’s not because she’s living in Chile while my boyfriend and I fantasize about living in Chile.

(Really, we do. Whenever we’re frustrated, with each other or the slow pace of the march towards our dream, we say “Chile”. It’s the equivalent of “head up, young person”. It means: baby, we’re gonna get there, but only if we keep walking. Together.)

So I’m not miffed because I’m jealous (much) of this brazen, gutsy broad. After all, I’m a brazen, gutsy broad, too. She’s my people.

No, it was because for a moment I thought her message to potential online entrepreneurs was this: quit being such a whiny baby and go live in your car already!

I was mad at Ash because of this:

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Sometimes, you find yourself living out of your car, storing all of your toiletries in an oversize red purse, lodging sweatshirts in between head rests and sun roof panels to block the windows so you can sleep, explaining to unsympathetic credit card companies that you can’t pay your $41 minimum payment because you’ve got negative $12 in your bank account, having borderline nervous breakdowns over what Equifax is going to have to say about all this, showering once every other day whenever someone is kind enough to let you use their water, subsisting on coffee and McDonald’s Snack Wraps, and finally starting to grasp why the homeless have a reputation for being alcoholics.

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I read that and my inner mamacita thought, now that’s some irresponsible shit.

I’m not saying that circumstance – living in a car because things have gone horribly, horribly awry – is irresponsible.

I’m saying that advising potential entrepreneurs to discount that consequence and dismiss that fear (and therefore fail to plan or prevent it) is irresponsible..and I see a lot of us adviser-types in the problogger business doing it.

And when I say “we” I don’t mean Ashley Ambirge. I mean all of us. I mean me.

Last year, after blogging for seven months, I started making money, got offered a recurring gig on ProBlogger, landed some big copywriting projects, and quit my job.

So I look like a success story, right?

Right. That is success and I know it. I marvel at it. I’m supporting my children with my words. Alleluia.

But.

I also know a blogger who is not making her mortgage payment and another who is actively contemplating living in his car. I have clients who are struggling and I have people who want to be clients but can’t commit to a session because my fee is their grocery money.

So that fear – we’re back to the car and the snack wraps again – is legitimate.

Let’s return to my apparently wildly successful problogger story. The first month I quit my job, I invoiced $10,600. That was a year ago. In the ensuing year, were months I billed five figures and months that I billed three figures.

(There is nothing like being a hundredaire, y’all.)

And this month I haven’t billed a cent. Not. One. Cent.

(I miss being a hundredaire.)

But.

I have a cushion: a big whack o’ cash from my December invoices. Even if I don’t bill anything for months I’ll be okay.

And so will they.

Let me tell you their names: Sophie and Lola. In Greek, Sophie means wisdom and in Lingala, Lola means heaven.

But what both their names really mean is this:

FEAR.

My daughters are literally the human incarnations of all my fears: that I’m not a good mother. That they’re going to starve in an attic or vermin-infested garret in which we will be forced to live because their bad mother has delusions of artistry. That they won’t have new shoes when they need new shoes. That they’ll never again be part of a family in which Mama has a husband. That they’ll hear people speaking disparagingly of their brazen hussy of a sex-writer mother and be irreparably scarred. That one day we’ll be on a therapist’s sofa and they’ll accuse me of making them travel and climb volcanoes when they wanted to spend Saturdays at the mall. That this child currently singing ‘the more we get together, together, together’ will belt it out it in a continuous loop forever, forever, forever.

Sometimes I look at them and am overwhelmed by love for these two fearsome creatures.

Fear is pretty cute, yes?

Fear is also really fucking useful. Fear is an instructor and the main lecture goes like this:

Be prepared for it to be bad. Be prepared for it to be very, very scary. If at all possible, have a safety net, either in the form of a cash reserve, parents who love you and will let you live in their basement, or a car that you don’t mind living in. Consider trading for a nice camper van.

(Oh hell. That’s exactly what our TMF authoress is saying, isn’t it?)

Or have a spouse who is legally obliged to support you.

I did not digress.

If you look closely at a lot of the beginnings of big blogger success stories *coughstevepavlinacough*, you know what you see in the background? A wife with a job.

Or a blogger with a part-time job. Just ask Darren Rowse, Mr. ProBlogger himself, who had three part-time jobs AND a wife with a job and straight-up advises you to do the same.

(At least about the part-time job. I’ve not yet seen him advise prospective probloggers to marry for money.)

And there’s no shame in those beginnings. I’m not using those two millionaire bloggers as examples in order to invalidate their stories. Their stories – and backstories – are instructive. They had safety nets. So should you.

Because the obstacles and consequences of self-employment are real and fear is legitimate and wildly necessary. Fear is evolutionary. It’s been bred into our DNA: the dude who wasn’t scared of the sabre toothed tiger did not live to reproduce. The terrified wise-ass who hustled outta there, climbed a tree, survived the trauma of watching her friend’s unfortunate end, and then invented the spear…she’s your auntie, three thousand years removed. Her fear courses through your blood except now there aren’t extravagantly fanged tigers on the prowl. Now there are collection agents. And snack wraps.

I’m playing fast and loose with history. It’s an analogy. Humor me.

And that’s the thing about Ash’s car + snack wraps + nervous breakdown.

It’s an analogy, too.

And, with both inflammatory analogies, Ashley Ambirge and I are saying exactly the same thing. Fear is ever-present. You’re always going to be scared of something and the more scared you are, the more significant that something is.

Here’s an open secret: I am both a brazen, gutsy broad AND a fragile hothouse flower which means I am scared all the time.

I’m scared my beloved will one day stop loving me. I love him anyway. I’m scared my children will grow up and leave me. I love raising them anyway. I’m scared the money will stop rolling in. I love money anyway. I’m scared people will hate what I write and say so, loudly, to my face or even worse in the comments. I love writing anyway.

And none of these things necessarily mean that I’ll get my happily-ever-after on a beach in Chile while

* my best-selling, cash-weeping memoir is being devoured and quoted aloud by tourists on the next towel over;

* my deliriously happy, adequately sun-screened, and bicker-free children frolic in the sea; and

* my loverloverman fetches me margaritas and gazes adoringly at my abs.

The very fact that in this scenario I have visible abdominal muscles should alert us to its radical improbability.

And that’s okay. If none of that ever happens, that’s truly okay with me.

It’s the love and the loving and the living that counts.

And fear is a part of that. Every day. In every way.

So when Ash says “fuck it” to Fear (this is The Middle Finger Project, after all), I say Yes! Yes! YES! Fuck it! Ride it! Grab it, squeeze it, smack it, stroke it, lube it, love it. Make love to Fear. Give it lots to do and lots of reasons to keep coming back for more.

Because Fear is your lifelong lover and I promise you – in the words of a song that one of my fears (Lola) is still singing right this very minute – that the more you get together, the happier you’ll be.

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Told you she was brilliant.  Now–the reason why I published this today instead of tomorrow?  It’s because Kelly has just released a very sexy, very revelational free chapter of her forthcoming eBook, Red Shoe Blogger, and it’s ALL about fear.  As a matter of fact, it’s called A Concert of Fear, and it’s hella juicy.  So it just kind of made sense–you know, with Fear being exposed and naked and all over here…and her fear being exposed and naked and all over there.  Click here to go download the chapter, or to find out more about her glowing new book.  Or, you know…just to stalk her.  Because if I were to recommend stalking anyone, she’d be right up there on the list.  I should know.  I have practice.

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