Go Show Them!

“The moment” could be anything–a big sports competition, a class speech, or even something small, like taking a quiz. The length of the event could be quite long, maybe several hours. Yet I’ve noticed how it pales in comparison to the substantial anxiety I would feel in the many days leading up.

I’ve come to see it as a universal struggle, worse than others for some. How do I deal with it? How do I deal with the ever-rising pressure as the time separating me from “the moment” shrinks from days, to hours, to minutes?

For each of these moments, I find there comes a time where I have prepared all I could have. Reread, rehearsed, memorized, everything. In the charcoal I captured an expression I strongly recall making in the mirror, as I readied for my first soloist performance in my district band. What was going through my head?

“All those feelings? Screw them! You’ve done all you could, and you’ve done it spectacularly! Now it is time. Go show them!”