Either Do or Die Trying — I Choose What Scares Me Most
By: Louise Foerster
Tags: Fear, Storytelling, Life, Fiction, Self

Either Do or Die Trying — I Choose What Scares Me Most

The place I don’t want to go is exactly where I need to be.

Photo by Billetto Editorial on Unsplash

No one else on the new products team would do it.

Someone had to run the new product launch for a remote bottler in upper New York State. In January. Thirty degrees below zero wind chill. Five feet of snow and more coming.

The team chose me.

All my life, I’d hated public speaking. The preparation, rehearsal, being on stage, and being thrust into the spotlight was unbearable. In my schooling and at work, I’d learned to do it, but I suffered until it was over.

I packed the canned presentation. Props and goodies and other supplies had been shipped ahead — so supposedly I didn’t have to worry about a thing but doing a great job.

After battling the bitter cold and a near-endless drive, I chatter, pay compliments, do all the things we blue suits from corporate are expected to do.

Cocktails done, fried chicken dinner cleared, it’s time to start the product launch presentation.

The terribly-designed, stupid Robbie the Robot that starts our presentation is on stage. His lights malfunction. A technician has to adjust his recording. Instead of waving his wobbly arms and whizzing around the stage, he rocks catatonic back and forth.

He got a standing ovation.

The room went silent when I was introduced.

I adjust my microphone. Gazing into too-bright lights, I began my canned speech.

I’m losing the crowd.

People are talking, waving servers over for another drink, sneaking out of the room for a cigarette. The owner of the company and his management team have pasted polite smiles over their horror. A real-live human being is losing to dumb Robbie the Robot’s opening act.

My scripted talk is boring, flatfooted, and patronizing. Imagine the worst speech ever and take it down several miles.

Then I looked out at that crowd. I would never see these people again.

I put aside my script and talked. I told them about the new product and what it could do for them. I tried jokes that failed and others that worked. I stopped talking when I had nothing left to say.

I got a standing ovation.

I also learned that I loved presenting and public speaking. I went on to do interviews, radio shows, sales meetings, and conferences.

It was fun while it lasted.

Years passed. I left corporate world and entered writer world.

Foolhardy and scared gradually disappeared into a very good life with people I love and who love me.

Then, one day out of nowhere, I tripped over the Story Skills Workshop.

It scared me.

I had to do it.

Reasons I shouldn’t do it roared:

I’m too old. My work experience is irrelevant today. I like my life as it is. My writing is good and getting better.

Why mess with success? Because storytelling scares me more.

I signed up for the course. I struggled at first, but gradually I got into the rhythm. I looked forward to having my butt kicked each day.

Then Lesson 4 landed.

Record myself telling a story?

I hate being recorded, despise working without a script. Plus, my real-life stories are boring when compared with everyone else’s.

The avalanche of objections evolved into a colossal problem. Then a huger problem whispered: Who will I be if I don’t do this?

I’m writing a novel where the protagonist wants to be a storyteller. Her life does not support this at all — and she’s also pretty terrible at it. I’ve been agonizing over this story and it’s still a misshapen mess.

My story is about a scared character who still manages to get up on stage and tell her stories.

The irony did not escape me.

Storytelling terrified me. I had to go there.

The story I once intended to tell featured brave, polished-up me.

And it bored me, didn’t fit where I am right now.

Earlier that day, I dove into stories of creative, brave, and original by other students in the course. As my homework and gift to the other students, I wrote about what happened when I went to the places that scared me most.

Then, it hit me.

I am all the people I have ever been from the four-year-old who conquered a huge hill on her tricycle to the woman who ventured into Pilates in empathy with a loved one.

I will do this thing or die trying.

So, here I am now.

I’m doing this thing that scared me more than not doing it — because not doing it would kill me.

I am untwisted out of fear and out of complacency with being too old, too washed up, and too fluffy to say anything that will mean anything to anyone.

Doing this lesson means I tripped over and signed up for a writer’s retreat this weekend. I will work on my novel in progress, with fresh insight and new details to lend the character who is cheering me on.

I don’t know what’s coming next — and I am incredibly excited about that. Ideas are whizzing and I feel like four year old me charging up that too-big, forbidden hill because she had to do it or die trying.