So many people have asked me if I am scared lately that I sometimes wonder if I should be. Or that I am, and am just not owning up to it. One visitor gulped when I told her we had bought a new farm before we sold the other one. Another asked me if I might become indigent in the process. No, I said, I didn’t expect to do that. “You are crazy,” said an old friend. “I would never take that risk.”

I’ve dealt with quite a lot of fear in my life, and I know it is infectious. If fear is around you, it is easily transmitted, like a virus. This is why the therapists urge people who are anxious to surround themselves with positive people. And why I’ve come to see the news as a health hazard, not a civic service.  If the people around me are into drama, are wedded to martyrdom, are frightened themselves, addicted to gloom and worry, it can go through me like a bolt of electricity. Many people love to transmit fear. It is what they know.

Sometimes I do feel some fear about selling the farm, owning two properties, lowering the price on Bedlam Farm so much there will be little money left. And lots of other things are happening in my life this summer. I will turn 65.  I am in good health, but my body is changing, and I can feel it. Whatever happens, there will not be enough money to do all of the things we had wanted to do. I understood I would have to give up most of my savings and IRA’s when I got divorced a few years ago. I did so knowingly, and traded this willingly for the many things I got in return. It was cheap at the price.

There are many work changes as well. The publishing industry has been completely transformed, and the revenues that used to come from hardcover book sales and their royalties have been essentially wiped out in the great and ongoing transition to cheaper books and digital books. In response to those changes, I’ve devoted myself to the blog, deepened my work in photography, undertaken video work, expanded my “brand” (the publisher’s term) to include children’s books, e-books, and also changed the nature and structure of my paper books.These changes have helped me creatively. I am more focused on what I do well – tell stories about animals. My blog is enormously successful and thus, increasingly valuable.

I believe these steps will work for me, but there are no guarantees in the creative world. The future is not predictable. And then, there’s the real estate market, which has changed as radically as publishing. The farm could sell tomorrow or not for months. It just takes one buyer, they say, and this is so. Everything sells, they say,  it just takes some time, and this is so also. We’ve knocked $75,000 off of the asking price since December, and we are not comfortable knocking off any more.

So perhaps there is a lot of fear buried inside of me, waiting to emerge, requiring maintenance, thought and awareness. I know these anxieties live within me, are part of my neural system. I often wake up in the night afraid, and by dawn it has melted away.  Fear never completely goes away, it just needs to be understood for what it so often is – a symptom, just a reality. A space to cross.

And there is this, I tell my friends. I am absolutely committed to the course we are on, and so is Maria. I believe in it fully, and we will find a way to do it. It calls to us. It is meant to be. The donkeys, sheep, dogs, cats and chickens are all going, and a new dog, Red,  is coming too. Rebirth to life, fuel for a writer.

One of the things the move offers is this. I have given up on fear as a way of making decisions about my life. It is disastrous and destructive. Fear did me much more damage than any move to any new place could possibly do. Many of the things I have always feared in life – vulnerability, incompetence, the handling of money, helplessness – are tied up in this change. So I must proceed, show myself once again, and maybe even for good  that a life in fear is not a life worth living.  I won’t ever do it again. I will share this process as I have in the past. It is good for me and hopefully helpful to some of  you.

Walking in Merck, I thought how fortunate I was, at this point in life, to learn how strong I can be. And when it is over, and I look back, how proud of me I want to be.