Do Something Scary Every Day

or maybe just at some point

Welcome to Pocketful of Prose, a community for sharing stories. As always, links are in bold, and there is an audio of this post if that works better for your life.

I recently finished Kate Baer’s And Yet.

I love the word yet. It’s so hopeful. Another phrase I’m quite fond of at this stage in my life is whenever possible, a phrase I stole from Kate Bowler. For me, whenever possible represents a softening, a releasing of rigidity, an allowance for naps and rest and sun.

In And Yet, Kate writes this poem.

Invitation

They say do one thing a day that scares you—
but I say find someone else to scare.
Remove your face.
Break the bed with your morning loving.
In the evening, go down to the water
and wait for no one.
Let your life rest
on what is already good.

The poem is an invitation to say whenever possible to yourself, to choose contentment over constant striving. Because phrases like “do one thing a day that scares you” apply pressure. They reinforce a culture of shoulds and scarcity that suggests we are never enough as we are.

And yet…

I did something scary this past week.

On Thursday night, I got on stage in front of a full house of over a hundred or so people, mostly consisting of people I did not know, and I told a story. I was one of six storytellers participating in a night of storytelling put on by Pivot.

Before the performance, Loreley Smith, my friend who also happened to be telling a story that night and I were talking to Ammi Midstokke, the MC for the evening, who also writes a weekly column for the Spokesman-Review’s Outdoors and is the author of All the Things: Mountain Misadventure, Relationshipping, and Other Hazards of an Off-Grid Life, which is a hilarious and heartwarming collection of Ammi’s adventures.

We shared with Ammi that we were feeling a little scared and Ammi asked, “What are you afraid of?” I should have known that a woman who spent the night stuck in the Idaho Selkirks after being crushed by a boulder until she was finally rescued by helicopter might have a different relationship to fear.

My fear was so physical at that point. I felt like I was Winnie the Pooh and I had just swallowed a honey jar, and it was sitting somewhere between my chest and my throat. Not only was no one trying to help me expel it, I was expected to pretend that everything was normal, and the giant honey jar inside me was no big deal.

Ammi’s question caused me to reflect on the root cause of the honey jar.

Loreley shared that she was worried that she would fall on her face. Just the day before I was practicing my story on my walk home from school, a regular habit of mine over the past several weeks.  I tucked my glasses into the top of my sweater, set my phone timer and launched into my opening. I got three lines in and tripped on my shoelaces. My hiking boots are perfect in every respect except one, which is that the laces are slightly too long, especially if you are lazy like I am and don’t lace them up all the way. They are a hazard. I rolled onto the sidewalk, banging up the right side of my body from knee to elbow to the palm of my hand. It wasn’t until I walked all the way home that I realized I no longer had my glasses.

So, falling on my face was a real concern as was forgetting something really important.

“I’m worried that I will freeze and forget my story,” I told Ammi. I am not great under pressure. One of our favorite games to play right now in our family is called Listography. For each round, you are given a category, and you have to create a list of 3 to 10 words in that category, 90’s pop songs, pizza toppings, elements of the periodic table (yes, Dan always wins this game.) Sometimes you want to match no other players. Sometimes you want to match one other player, and sometimes you want to match as many players as possible. A few nights ago, the categories were working in my favor. The category was poets; the goal was to list ten and to match only one other player. Dan wrote Mary Oliver because she is my favorite poet, and everyone knows that. Guess who didn’t write Mary Oliver.

That is how much I suck under pressure.

The Pivot coaches and my kids kept telling me that it was my story, so I couldn’t really forget it, and that was all good and well advice, but folks, if I could forget Mary Oliver, I could forget anything. Forgive me, Mary.

Seats were starting to fill up in the Washington Cracker Building as it got closer to show time. Dan and the kids arrived, smiling and giving me encouraging looks and thumbs-up signs, and I showed them the seats I saved for them. Our conversation with Ammi came to a natural close. I didn’t get to share my third fear with her which was that I was worried I would be so nervous I wouldn’t be present with the audience at all, that I wouldn’t be able to render the full meaning of my story because I would be too busy trying not to vomit a honey jar. I was worried I wouldn’t be good.

I wanted to do a good job in front of my family and friends. They have been the best cheerleaders. Each of them has helped me practice. Anna helped me rewrite the script on more than one occasion. She gave me one of my best jokes. Seabass missed parkour practice to cheer on his mom, and Anna brought her best friend to the performance to see her mom. Dan messaged me Thursday morning to tell me I would be awesome. Jamie one of my dearest friends in the world came to cheer me on as well as did several of my other friends from the writing community. I wanted to make them all proud.

At some point a wise voice within reminded me that I had already made them proud by participating, and I should probably just try and have some fun.

Which I did. I had a lot of fun telling my story.

All the help I had gotten over the past few weeks from my family and the Pivot coaches, loosened the lid off the jar in my throat until only honey remained. My performance was smooth, and the audience was kind. They laughed at my jokes, they gasped in surprise, and at one heartwarming moment, I heard the entire audience say, “Awww,” in unison.

Before the show as I was still shaking out my nerves, my friend Andrea said, “You gave birth. You can do this.”

“Fair point,” I said, “but I didn’t have to give birth in front of people.”

After my performance, I had feelings that were similar to the feelings I had after I gave birth to each of my children. I was grateful and glad I did it, but I was also thinking I might be good in terms of ever doing it again. The pain was too close.

But Seabass came along, so you know I didn’t stay in that place. I’ve already started thinking of stories that might be fun to tell one day, down the road when I’m ready to do something scary again.

Not yet though. Not today, not tomorrow, and not anytime soon because like Kate Baer, I don’t need to do something scary every day. Today, I’m resting in “what is already good.” The incredible love and support I felt from my three favorite people in the world, the way that I heard them cheering for me over the rest of the crowd, the words that my dear friend Jamie shared with me- that my story “had such a good blend of humor, and heartwarming kindness and love. So much like you, my friend,” reminding me of what a gift it is to be seen as our most beautiful selves by our best friends, the round of Listography we played after the event which reminded me that my family me accepts and loves me for who I am, someone who sometimes forgets Mary Oliver and tries to pass off Oscar the Grouch as a literary character, and the laughter, oh so much laughter…

If you don’t live in Spokane or if you do and you weren’t able to make it last night, do not fear, I will share the story I told last night in this space soon enough.

In the meantime, I wish you all warmth and love wherever this pocket finds you, in the midst of something scary or resting in the good.

I would love to continue this conversation in the comments. Tell us about something scary you did and why it was or wasn’t worth it. Chime in about what is resonating with you, or just say hi.