I only jumped from a very-high-dive platform once. I have no memory of where, or why or how anyone talked me into it, but I remember doing it.
I also remember wanting desperately NOT TO.
During the olympics I sometimes catch the diving, and although I admire the sport, watching it requires me to actively quiet a visceral cringing. It feels like every internal organ I've got is sandwiched between a convulsing spinal column and the shriveling of every skin cell covering my body. It is a recoil against height from the inside and out.
So now that I've decided to "leap into" writing more publicly, and chosen to do it from the tall, supportive backs of persons I know and admire, utilizing the very tall platforms of OTHER folks I know and admire...I'm having that moment where I'm high up in the air, and I know SOMETHING will go wrong.
My writing will be truncated. My intended message will fall flat. I'll write too much, or not enough. I'll look like an idiot...or worse, panic and take someone down with me into a fatal bellyflop.
So, I'm visualizing the climb, the foot-thick, solid, stable, grainy concrete platform, my toes are off the edge, and I'm just telling myself over and over, "It's just water."
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