I’m usually no procrastinator, but when it came to my goal of walking into downtown coffee and book shops about opportunities to perform my singer/songwriter material, procrastinate I surely did!
And it’s no mystery why. Walking into places and asking for gigs (i.e. hustling) is not something I’ve done much of in my life. It’s a muscle – and one that I had not developed. It didn’t help that I’d also made up a story in my mind that I was in essence soliciting, bothering people, offering something that people would probably have no interest in.
This is how my #1 most important action item sat idly on my task list month after month, while I came up with reasons why it wasn’t yet a good time to do so.
It’s too hot this week, too stormy.
I have too much going on this week.
I’m not feeling very extroverted this week so I probably won’t do a good job.
(Isn’t it funny how when we want a reason NOT to do something, our minds are more than happy to oblige?)
But eventually, an afternoon inevitably came when I had literally nothing else on my schedule or to-do list and could not think of a single reason NOT to go downtown and git ‘er done (except for the simple fact that I did not want to).
As I drove into town and looked for a parking spot, I could feel every fiber of my being screaming at me: “No! I don’t want to do this! Let’s just turn around and go back home where it’s safe!” It was hard, but I ignored those thoughts, parked my car, grabbed a few of my freshly designed postcards along with a few CDs of my new album, and walked into coffee shop #1.
And guess what happened? Really, take a guess.
Well, if you guessed that the manager was thrilled I’d come in and highly interested in having me perform – and even inquired about whether I was interested in a regular weekly or monthly show – you are correct.
And boy did I feel silly. How many hours had I spent dreading something which as it turned out was going to be easy and even a delight?
At that moment, I promised myself this one thing: It’s ok to be afraid, and it’s ok to be nervous, but never again would I suffer for months in anticipation of something I was terrified to do. Better to dive right in, and, as history had now taught me, it would probably not be nearly as bad as I’d pictured, and in fact might go delightfully well.
So is this post about not being afraid? No, definitely not. It’s simply about (in the words of author Susan Jeffers) feeling that fear and doing it anyway.
(And hopefully sooner rather than later).
