Driving to work every morning, I listen to quite the little mishmash of music, contests, and traffic reports. There are six local radio stations preset in my car and during the 20-plus minute commute, I mostly tune out the jibber-jabber of the morning hosts and skip around a lot to avoid having to hear Love The Way You Lie or Airplanes or anything by Nickelback. (Good luck. At least once every morning I'm frantically scrabbling at the preset buttons trying to avoid Rihanna's whining or Chad Kroeger sounding like an asshole while screaming "NO! NO!" and completely forgetting I'm operating a motorized vehicle).

Anyway, this morning one particular nugget caught my attention: tomorrow is National Face Your Fears Day, a day dedicated to identifying our fears, taking steps to conquer them, and celebrating the changes. HALLELUIAH!

I don't consider myself to be scared of much. I have the usual phobias: spiders, clowns, fire. I'm scared of owls because they can turn their heads all around and they have big claws. I'm afraid of tanning beds, not just because of goodies like skin cancer and germs on the glass but because I'm terrified of getting trapped inside one, coffin-style, like in I Know What You Did Last Summer, and baking to death. I'm scared of getting stabbed or shot or robbed. Maybe I am scared of everything. But none of those fears is the crippling kind. None of them interferes with my daily life or holds me back. Sure, I stay out of tanning salons, I avoid circuses, I don't light myself on fire or roam around in dangerous neighbourhoods picking fights with sketchy-looking hooligans. Problem solved.

The fear that holds me back most, that effs with my life plans on a semi-regular basis, is fear of failure. That sounds pretty generic, but it sums things up.

I don't invite my friends over for dinner because won't like what I cook. Or they might claim to have other plans and say no - and how will I know if they actually have other plans, or they just don't want to come over?

I don't buy supplies to make jewelry (something I've been curious about trying for a while) because it's going to look like something a 7-year-old threw together during art class.

I don't sign up to run in a race because I won't be one of the top finishers. I might actually be among the slowest group.

Taking classes, making friends, experimenting with a new hairstyle, pursuing freelance writing opportunities - these are all things I end up not trying because I'm scared of the unknown and assuming I'm going to fail.

So tomorrow, on National Face Your Fears Day, I'm going to do three things that scare me. Three things that truly make me uncomfortable - not watching a video of owls on YouTube (omg creepy) or heading down to Skin Cancer Emporium to soak up some faux-rays. Three things that genuinely put me out of my comfort zone.

I'm not sure what they are yet but I have a few ideas. I'll blog about them here later in the week, whether they were glowing successes or raging failures.

What are you afraid of?