When Confidence Fails

OK, I see it's been a while since I last posted here, and abandoning this blog was never my intention.  I just tend to get distracted with things and lose my focus now and again.  Hopefully, with only 147 days until I leave for Spain, I can continue to post here the ways in which I find learning a language helpful to opening new doors in life.  That being said, I want to talk a little about my moment of fear and doubt in myself and how it has affected me recently.

I have been a follower of the website Fluent In Three Months since 2010 and the site's host, Benny, has been a great inspiration for me.  I posted the following in his forums about my recent bout of terror regarding meeting him in person.  Read on:

This past Summer, while Benny was touring the globe on his book tour, I was fortunate enough to be presented the opportunity to meet him along one of his stops. He made a stop in Connecticut, about 45 minutes from where I live and I had planned on making the trip to the book store for some time, as the stop had been announced months in advance. I had the day off from work, his book in my hand, and a collection of anecdotes to share with him, yet as the minutes ticked by that afternoon, suddenly an unsettling anxiousness took me over. I was nervous about going to meet him in person although I had been a follower of his site since 2010. His blog inspired my own Spanish language blog that now has almost 900 entries. I've used his platform of making small, three month goals to help me in my journey to speak Spanish and in May of 2015 I will be spending a month alone in Spain with the intention of not speaking a word of English. So what stopped me from making the short drive to meet him? In short, I was afraid. Despite all of my hard work and all of the conversation exchanges I have had through Skype, I was nervous about meeting Benny in person. Why? I was certain he would expect me to speak Spanish. In fact, I was planning on speaking Spanish with him, so what was I afraid of? I was afraid I would say the wrong thing. I was afraid I would conjugate a verb in the present tense that should have been in the past or that I would use a feminine article for a masculine noun. I was afraid that I would tell him how long I had been studying the language and how excited I was to be going to Spain and then I would be unable to say even the most basic phrases. Worst of all, I was afraid that after just one silly mistake, I would fall back into English, knowing full well that Benny speaks English and I could just as easily talk to him in English as I could in Spanish without actually showing that I had learned any Spanish at all. Despite all the advice I have given and received over the years, I suddenly lacked the confidence in myself to use a skill I had been working on attaining for years. I find myself more timid speaking Spanish to those who are fluent in English as they can readily point out my mistakes and we can easily fall into the trap of speaking English instead of our target language. I'm using my trip to Spain as a way to force myself to get over my timidness, as it is less likely I will find those willing to use English in place of Spanish. With roughly 145 days until my trip, I am more and more anxious, but the ticket is bought, the room is reserved, and I can't back out now. I wish I hadn't chickened out of my opportunity to talk with Benny in Spanish, but hopefully I can use this as motivation to practice more and more before my trip. I'd love to hear others thoughts about their experiences with complete loss of confidence.