I just finished watching a TV show called “13: Fear Is Real” (don’t worry, i had not heard of it either). I discovered that this American reality competition, although a bit cheesy, is also a great guilty pleasure show centered all around FEAR (scary music).
“13: Fear is Real” ran for one season on The CW in 2009 and it is quite a bit edgier than i would have expected from the network famous for their teenage romcoms. 
The premise is a bit cluttered, 13 people compete to win $66,666 while stranded in the middle of forests and swamps and doing scary stuff. Wait, actually it is pretty straight forward. At the end of every episode (usually) 2 of the weakest contestants need to fulfill a task such as getting themselves uncuffed from a bathroom filling up with water, or digging themselves out after being buried alive, or getting out from under a swinging sharp pendulum etc etc. Whoever is fastest gets to stay another week and you know, not die. In the end, 2 contestants remain who ravage through the forest looking through animal graves and buckets of intestines and inside babies heads to find a key to a house with some cash. Oh the crap people do for cash.
The cheesy part is that you can see that all safety measures have been taken, nobody is in real danger but all the contestants were instructed to say their friends on the show had been killed and it just seemed so ridiculous. The cast also has the few obligatory dumb blond model types and you just wonder if they are using the CW as a gateway to a possible future career in porn. In addition, there is the so called death box, the owner of which can “kill of” up to 3 other contestants but no one knows who has the damn box and..it is just a box!
It is a guilty pleasure however cause there are lots of beware of the dark-moments without the extreme gore from films such as Saw. Some of the contestants are also hardcore as in they take it so seriously and plot against each other…very intriguing. Also, it was produced by the guys behind the Evil Dead films so even though it is on a budget it still has the ability to be entertaining and then some.
Going back to the original quotation, the fact that i heard this FDR quotation for the first time in an episode of “The X-Files” really shows how much television has influenced me. The quotation stuck with me because fear is such a debilitating weakness that somehow turns off logic and the confidence in oneself to be able to handle anything. 
And boy, i am a coward.. or maybe just overly dramatic. I am scared of the weirdest things, anything from mosquitoes (if there is one in my room at night i will get up, drown myself in mosquito spray and cover every inch of my skin with clothing including mittens and a hat, even in the deepest summer…weird, eh) to daytrips (the latter just cause i am really afraid of missing out on a chance for an awesome experience and there is something about an event only lasting a day that gets me all nervous since it is today or never). Also, i would really love to learn some Bulgarian (who am i kidding, i would love to become fluent) but i am afraid of failure and getting frustrated and then in the end giving up.
However, there is really something to be said about the power that self awareness can give you. 
Fear is what you should be afraid of. The realization that fear is a natural response which you cannot control gives you the possibility to accept it and in theory, learn to live with it. In my case, i will continue to drown myself in mosquito spray (who the fuck needs those creatures?), try and accept that i use the opportunities in life to the fullest of my ability at that specific moment, and with Bulgarian..i don’t know, one day at a time? And stay optimistic? Not sure if this will help me adjust but it has gotten me this far.
Exploring Estonia 