A fear from deep within..

As I was walking through Seattle's early morning fog/mist this morning on my way to work, on a day like any other, I saw it - something I find so disturbing that it makes my skin crawl just to think about it. To the normal person, you might think, "You're such a weirdo, what the heck is wrong with you?" But to me, seeing the bushy tail gray squirrel with it's big teethy fangs, running all over the tree in it's rabies-crazed behavior says one thing - "Beware."

It's true, I'm scared of squirrels..not in the same way you'd be scared of someone coming into your house in the middle of the night, or even walking through a dark alley allow, but it's the unpredictability of them that makes me feel a bit uncomfortable. It started a long time ago and it began with ferrets. I mean, I HATE ferrets and in my mind the two critters are closely aligned and simply up to no good.

Countless stories I've read on the Internet or experience first hand have validated my fear time and time again -- my friend was hospitalized from squirrel bites once, not that I have any sympathy because she was stupid enough to keep it as a pet, but whatever. My classes at UA were once canceled for 3 days because a squirrel gnawed through the power lines, causing a major outage. Up to no good, I tell you.

But seeing that squirrel on the way to work this morning got me thinking about irrational fears, and I realized I have A LOT of them. Some of them I wasted a tremendous amount of time worrying about them when I can't control them, and others are just something I need to get over.

* Fear of the economy (like I can do a damn thing about it, all I can do is hoard away my money and hope for the best).
* Fear of feet(used to be ridiculously bad a few years ago, but I'm pretty much over it)
* Fear of failing (the good news is that I'm the turnkey element to determining my success)
* Fear of not figuring out what I want to do in life (okay, does anyone really know? Please, tell me?)
* Fear of never seeing the world (...I can make this happen...eventually)
* Fear of never being near my family again (Again, I can make this happen, just take time)
* Fear of the unknown (Ah, yes. Completely irrational. Good, Jessica, good.)
* Fear of spiders (Okay, I'm not calling this one irrational. It's perfectly legit. And I'm convinced it's the way I'm going out. Spider bite, right to my heart.)
* Fear of not leaving a legacy (Okay, here's the good news...I have lots of great friends, who talk about me on occasion, so if I don't have one after a spider comes to kill me, at least I have people talking about me while I'm alive.
* Fear of lack of knowledge (I'm just afraid of being the dumb one, not knowing, needing to be the one in the know all the time, it's hard to keep up)
* Fear of missing America's Next Top Model (it's on tomorrow night and I have a PRSA meeting, God help me!)

As you can see, mostly irrational or something I just need to get the hell over. And I will, I hope, all in good time.