That's interesting. I don't think I've ever asked myself how I feel about fear. I am, pretty much, always afraid. Fear has been my main mode of protection as far back as I can remember -- fear and caution and Being Good. So doing the scary thing is really hard, because it feels like inviting punishment, and while I'm good at forcing myself to be brave in some ways, the deeper under my skin a thing is, the harder the fear is to conquer. Skiing is quite a long way out from where I live, so I can, a lot of the time, grit my teeth. Writing, not so much. What I hate most about the points of failure -- which I tend to thinki of as failure-of-perfection errors -- is how unpredictable they are, and, often, how random. The time my luggage was the last item on the belt and one of my friends was furious with me because he didn't like waiting -- there was nothing I could have done to prevent that but it was my fault. The time a friend of Phil's lit into me in public for asking a mutual friend about her job, and went on to upbraid me for having done a PhD, having dared ever to write, having dared to be out of work.... I'd asked out of interest and his rant turned out to be about an issue he had with his partner, but I was there and he felt no compunction in using me as a punching bag. Family things.... I'm programmed to defer and be good but I can't control entropy, and, well, better always watchful and anxious than in-the-way and harmed. The marquis is like T, and can look away, and he doesn't completely get why I can't (though he is incredibly patient about it). So in a way it's less about fear than it is about avoiding punishment (and regrettably one of the ways I'm warped is that I have taught myself to self-punish as required, which annoys the hell out of me).
I don't know if I think of you as brave: you are so very *you* -- smart, insightful, quick-thinking and willing to speak your mind. I admire you hugely, certainly: you're so good at being you and that's wonderful.