A Few Thoughts, Late In The Evening
I’ve been trying to sort out the unique flavor of my feeling of anticipation about my upcoming trapeze performance, and I think I’ve finally sorted it.
I was surprised by this sense that I don’t want the next few days to slip away too fast — I’m not prone to stage fright. Rather the opposite, in fact: I’m essentially a giant show-off by nature, but shy around strangers in small groups. Give me a stage or a podium, and I’m good.
So why, I kept wondering, is my anticipation not the unadulterated OMG OMG I am going to explode if Saturday doesn’t get here soon! of my childhood?
And then I got it: this is the feeling of knowing that it will be over as soon as it begins. We get one night: for me, 2 minutes and 30 seconds. It will be amazing — and then it will be over. It would be easy to get so caught up in eager anticipation that I actually don’t experience the actual thing, let alone this whole week.
I don’t want to get caught up in the anticipation of this singular moment in the future — our first-ever trapeze performance — and miss now.
Right now, my summer looks a little like a running start off a cliff into a wild, exhilarating wingsuit flight. It would be easy to miss the whole thing if I let my monkey mind run away with me. Anticipation has its merits, but it can definitely take the but in its teeth and run.
So I’m going to work on being present for the next few days. Really, I guess, that’s work we should be doing always — but some moments make better examples than others of why that is.
Shamelessly stolen from Hendy Mp/Solent News via The Telegraph.
So, in short: here is good. And I’m going to try to be here, now.
Posted on 2016/05/31, in aerials, life, performances and tagged aerials, be here now, don't miss the moment, here is good, performing, the opposite of stage fright, trapeze. Bookmark the permalink. 3 Comments.
danseur ignoble 
I’m not sure what to expect of myself on that score. On one hand I’ve given a presentation with a live demo about the hunt for Viktor Bout to a hall full of 150 geeks and couldn’t have cared less, I’ve danced on the stage at XOYO to Frankie Knuckles, I told Scott McNealy he was wrong. I can be quite brazen.
On the other hand I recall a conference presentation for work that gave me the absolute, utter shitty blue funk. As in, crying in the crapper, obsessively trying to control my pulse, pacing like a caged creature, forgetting I was wearing a radio mic and trying to put another one on. Drinking cup after cup of coffee, like that would help. I guess the difference was that one had consequences you could measure in money, although so did the McNealy incident. Also it was during the anxiety episode I told you about.
Oh, yeah, an existing anxiety episode can basically throw everything off. Also, office politics can definitely impact that kind of thing, which is another possible factor.
Brazen is a good word for my basic feelings about performing — it’s nice to know other people feel that way 😀
I really regretted how unsympathetic I’d been to various people I know well about their stage fright, though. A huge failure of empathy.