For me, it’s always hardest on the first day back in the booth after any kind of a break. The longer the break, the harder that first day tends to be.
A fear seems to build up within me that has weight and mass. It feels so very solid. Ominous. Impenetrable.
The worst thing about that fear is that it is wordless, irrational. There is no logic to it. Just because life conspired to keep me out of the booth for a while, there is no reason to believe that anything will go wrong when I start to record.
But, that’s how it feels. it makes no logical sense but emotions don’t need to follow any kind of logic. They just are.
Experience has shown that if I just push through, everything will be fine.
(I did push through on this one. And yes, it was all good.)
Yet, that fear persists.
That fear has been with me my whole life.
Stage fright has always been nearby, making itself known in the quiet before the show.
“The call is 5!”
“Thank you, five!”
There it is.
I can feel it. Taste it maybe, right there on the edge of my tongue. Definitely feel it. It’s a weight restricting my breath and movement.
I know I can move past it. I always do.
But it’s still there. It still hurts.
Once I am on the other side of it, it feels so small, silly, insignificant. I always wonder how something so flimsy in retrospect can induce so much fear when it is looming over the road ahead.
I have come to accept that this is part of my process. That the fear will always be there.
What I forget, every single time, is that the fear of the fear is so much more powerful than the actual fear itself.
Maybe writing this here will remind me 🙂