What am I afraid of?

You might have heard it said that as far as fears go, more people are afraid of speaking in public then they are of death.

I’m afraid of speaking to computers.

Because of an undisclosed and undetermined pain in my elbows, my physical therapist recommended that I try voice-activated software so I can rest my arms for a while.

But the way my brain is wired, it’s so much easier for me to write than to speak. My verbal skills, sadly, fall far behind of my written skills.

So I sit here looking at a blank screen, wondering what to say. No. Not just wondering. Afraid of how to start, is more like it.

I used to be afraid of thunderstorms. Deadly afraid. Like hiding under the covers screaming kind of afraid. That lasted until my early teens, when I cured myself of it through aversion therapy.

It was nothing formal; No therapists involved. At the time we live in a house on a hill with a view of the Catskill Mountains, which was the direction the weather came from. Including the thunderstorms.

One day a storm was developing, and I forced myself to sit in the center of that room, floor to ceiling glass pane windows on two sides, and experienced that storm from beginning to end.

I was nervous at first, but eventually realized I had nothing to fear. Eventually instead of seeing the fear and danger of the thunderstorm, I began to see its beauty. The dramatic colors of the sky as the clouds bunched up, the way it took hold of the trees and battered the leaves to and fro, the way the rain pelted down on the windows, and the clean way the sky and the air looks after the storm was done.

And I suppose to cure myself of the fear of speaking to computers, I should approach it the same way.

Just sit in my chair, make a cup of tea, and talk to the stupid thing.

I think I can handle that.