The Blair blogger.

Last weekend I was 100 feet in the air. Okay, that wasn't an amazingly impressive opening sentence, but I'm scared of heights, so you should be impressed.
I went on a very big wheel in Sheffield City centre, I hopped into a little compartment on the wheel without even thinking about my irrational fear. Then the wheel began to move, and I've never been more scared in my life. Give me a roller-coaster any day, the bigger the better even. But, and I'm sure the people working there did this on purpose, hanging from the very top of this ride for the longest five minutes of my life, in a tiny, transparent box, was not to my taste.
I was with my father, who thought it would be hilarious to stand up and swing the damn thing, shouting 'look over there!".
He said to me (a quivering mess at this point) 'this will be good for you, it'll help you get over your fear' - which I'm not too sure about.
Anyway, the reason I relived this horrible moment is because it has since made me wonder - how do we conquer fears? Just because I didn't fall to my death from 9000 feet in the sky, doesn't mean I'm no longer scared of heights.
Many times before I've heard the advice 'do something every day that scares you', but for me, that's really not a challenge. If we push the boundaries every day, does it really help us become braver?
Being scared can stop us from doing all sorts of things, can you imagine how productive people would be if we nothing made us scared?
It's like the phrase 'practice makes perfect', the more we deal with fear, do we become better equipped to deal with it? How often do you face your biggest fear?
One example of my scepticism on this theory is my embarrassing behaviour watching a horror film earlier this week. I've watched many, many horror films in my time. However, this didn't stop me from squealing in terror and clawing my own face a little. In public, may I add.
Fear is a strange thing, it holds us back but it can also make us more productive. It can cloud our perception, it can make even the most together person an irrational mess.

My father's perception of fear is that it is something to be faced head on, something we should take control of and fight, and to never let it hold us back. I guess some people are more able to deal with fear than others, whereas I just have nightmares of plane crashes once a fortnight.
Although, my biggest fear of all is writing a blog and not being able to think of a witty finishing sentence. Yeah...