Ten Year Self Improvement Challenge

So, I started this blog as a place to keep track of my participation in Mark Watson's Ten Year Self-Improvement Challenge henceforth known as TYSIC (details here: http://www.markwatsonthecomedian.com/web/2010/02/26/ten-year-self-improvement-challenge/). I will be doing occasional (whenever I'm procrasting) updates on TYSIC and possibly also other blogs, but those'll be even less frequent.

My fear of failure - So this is the big one. Whenever I feel like I might fail at something, I avoid it like the plague. It's partly cos I'm lazy, but mostly cos I'm scared. I went to this university because it was near enough my parent's house to go home on the weekends. I picked 'Life Sciences' as a major because I was good at it, not cos I was passionate about it. I started doing a Master's degree in a lab that I didn't really like because I was too scared to change and too scared to apply for jobs at the end of my 4th year uni. It took me 6 months of hating that degree and my old boss before I quit because I was too scared of moving on. I've been single for 4 years cos I'm too scared of relationships. Casual sex is easy, relationships are hard. I got burned by my last and only long-term relationship and I've stayed away from them since.
My goal of the next 10 years is to face my fear of failure, to apply for jobs that I might not get, to make decisions about what I want to do with my life, to move to the UK (at least for a while) and to have relationships, no matter how much they scare me. I'm sure I'll fail along the way, but I need to learn to deal with that.

My first week: So I've wanted to dye my hair fire-engine red for about 5 years. I've always been scared and made excuses not to. But I figured it'd be a good way to start my TYSIC cos if I ever want to go red, I should do it while I'm young. On Saturday I purchased 'red' dye from the store and dyed it. That <-- was the result. Clearly not red. More pink and some bits still brown. So I failed at my first attempt to face my fear of failure. Not sure what I learned there. Any comments of optimistic lessons would be appreciated.
I went back to the store and bought PERMANENT red dye. My best friend is coming over tonight and we're going to dye it. I will post a picture or two of the result.

When I start making progress on any goal that's more significant, I'll post it here as well. Any comments and feedback are always appreciated. Thanks for reading!
x Sarah