I’m Totally Freaking Out Here!

For the first time in my life I’m going to give a public speech about my writing! Whew, even just typing that, and/or saying it out loud, gives me a weird mix of excitement AND anxiety! My nerves are eating me from the inside out. The closest I’ve ever come to giving a ‘talk’ is a few times in church as a kid, and a couple of PowerPoint presentations at the day job. On the latter and most recent of the two, there were less than ten people in the room and I honest to God had a stomach ache for a week surrounding the event.

(I can do this. I can do this. I can do this)

That’s me ^^^ convincing myself that I’m not a total and complete wimp!

I don’t do speeches, I’m scared to death of speaking in public! How ironic that I just had a conversation and even wrote a post about artists fears and facing them.  I had had a conversation with a fellow artist about our fears being the biggest career killers. The notion got me to thinking, and I couldn’t agree more. So here I am facing my fears.

It’s kind of funny how these things line up. Oddly enough it was a goal of mine to step out of my comfort zone in 2018, and attend events if and when possible. I even threw in the official written list of accomplishments to come that I wanted to volunteer with kids and young adults.

The things we manifest, right?!

USU (Utah State University) is a college close to my home. A few weeks after I sat down and took the time to line out my goals for 2018, I was actually tagged in a random post on FB. The post was one put in place by a librarian at USU, reaching out to local authors.  After being tagged by a reader of my work, I responded to the post and let her know that I was in fact an established local author and would be very interested in whatever bookish shenanigans they had in mind. All that she said was she’d be in touch.

WELL… over the weekend, she did indeed get back in touch with me. She asked if I’d actually give a twenty minute talk at a student event!!!

Breath Didi, breath!

I suppose it all boils down to one question. And, no that is not a question of ‘whether or not I can do it’. It isn’t ‘whether or not I’ll survive’. It also isn’t ‘how worthy is a girl who never even attended college to be teaching anything at all to college students’ either!  The question is this: HOW BADLY DO I ACTUALLY WANT TO REACH MY ULTIMATE GOAL OF A NYT BEST SELLING AUTHOR?

Things like little 20 minutes talks are minor. They’re stones to jump, small obstacles, little fish. It might feel like a huge life altering thing right now, because I am indeed scared shitless! But, if somehow I can manage to keep the finish line in my sights, then I can totally do this.  The event isn’t until April 10th, so I totally have time to prepare myself. That also gives me plenty of time to stock up on the booze I’ll need to drink myself into a coma afterwards!! lol JK…. kinda 😉

Wish me luck, and I hope this has inspired someone ANYONE to also step up and step out of their comfort zone. If I can do this you can. Together, lets help each other to make our lives better tomorrow than it is today.