Last week, I did a scary thing. By doing a scary thing, I learned that scary things don't stay scary if you keep doing them. Please note: Life tenet not guaranteed when diving out of airplanes, hopscotching through gunfire, or reading bodice rippers aloud to geriatrics.
But talking into a little camera on my laptop about things that are important to me - without a script, without editing, without deleting, without mercy for my perfection-seeking little soul - wasn't nearly as bad as I feared. So I did it again. And again. Soon, I'd done it eight times without dying. Proving to myself once and for all that doing scary things is 100% death-free.
Instead, I learned how to not sit in the dark. How to not give you an intimate tour of the inside of my cavernous nostrils. How to not care if I forget to finish a thought or the screenshot youtube chose makes me look like Nurse Ratched forgot one of my pills. I learned that I can get comfortable with something that previously made the inside of my stomach roil and my brain cells threaten to cannibalize each other. I learned that sometimes what you think matters doesn't. Because your intention can matter more than your execution and your attention can matter more than your hair.
What I Hope This Will Become
A way to connect with you in a different way. A way to explore how to let emotions help rather than hinder. A way to make this year amazing for good reasons rather than tragic ones. A way to use fear as the gateway to love. A way to crack myself open to the world. A way to step into what I truly want - and hopefully spark you to do the same.
If I can do crazy, scary, adventure-y things, so can you. If I can learn to harness my feelings and make them work for me instead of against me, so can anyone. It just takes a leap. Or a push.
I hope you join me. I hope this inspires you to go on your own adventures, to do something that scares you, to spend time crying on the floor when needed, confident that it will only make things better.
The videos are here. More is coming.