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I maintain the conviction that it is always possible to evolve. I believe you absolutely are able to instruct a veteran learner, provided that the experienced individual is willing and willing to learn. So long as the person is ready to confess when it was in error, and work to become a better dog.

OK yes, I am the old dog. And the trick I am working to acquire, despite the fact that I am a creature of habit? It is an significant challenge, something I have battled against, often, for my entire life. My ongoing effort … to develop a calmer response toward huntsman spiders. Apologies to all the different eight-legged creatures that exist; I have to be pragmatic about my capacity for development as a human. The focus must remain on the huntsman because it is sizeable, commanding, and the one I see with the greatest frequency. Encompassing a trio of instances in the recent past. In my own living space. I'm not visible to you, but I'm grimacing and grimacing as I type.

It's unlikely I’ll ever reach “fan” status, but my project has been at least achieving Normal about them.

I have been terrified of spiders dating back to my youth (in contrast to other children who adore them). During my childhood, I had a sufficient number of brothers around to guarantee I never had to confront any personally, but I still became hysterical if one was obviously in the same room as me. One incident stands out of one morning when I was eight, my family unconscious, and attempting to manage a spider that had ascended the family room partition. I “dealt” with it by positioning myself at a great distance, almost into the next room (in case it ran after me), and discharging a generous amount of insect spray toward it. It didn’t reach the spider, but it did reach and disturb everyone in my house.

With the passage of time, whoever I was dating or living with was, automatically, the least afraid of spiders in our pairing, and therefore tasked with handling the situation, while I emitted low keening sounds and ran away. When finding myself alone, my strategy was simply to leave the room, turn off the light and try to ignore its existence before I had to re-enter.

In a recent episode, I was a guest at a pal's residence where there was a particularly sizable huntsman who lived in the window frame, for the most part lingering. In order to be less fearful, I imagined the spider as a her, a girlie, one of us, just relaxing in the sun and listening to us chat. It sounds rather silly, but it was effective (to some degree). Alternatively, actively deciding to become less phobic proved successful.

Regardless, I've made an effort to continue. I reflect upon all the rational arguments not to be scared. It is a fact that huntsman spiders pose no threat to me. I understand they eat things like insect pests (creatures I despise). I am cognizant they are one of the world's exquisite, non-threatening to people creatures.

Alas, they do continue to move like that. They move in the deeply alarming and almost unjust way conceivable. The sight of their many legs transporting them at that alarming velocity triggers my primordial instincts to kick into overdrive. They ostensibly only have eight legs, but I believe that multiplies when they move.

Yet it cannot be blamed on them that they have scary legs, and they have an equal entitlement to be where I am – if not more. My experience has shown that taking the steps of trying not to instantly leap out of my body and run away when I see one, trying to remain calm and collected, and consciously focusing about their good points, has begun to yield results.

Simply due to the reality that they are hairy creatures that move hastily at an alarming rate in a way that invades my dreams, is no reason for they merit my intense dislike, or my girly screams. It is possible to acknowledge when fear has clouded my judgment and fueled by baseless terror. I doubt I’ll ever attain the “scooping one into plasticware and relocating it outdoors” stage, but one can't be sure. There’s a few years within this seasoned learner yet.