Voluntary Anxiety

I don’t know if you, like me, suffer from social anxiety and if yours, like mine, has gotten worse as you’ve gotten older. Things that I used to do without much stress are now sometimes quite daunting, and I’m constantly forcing myself, it seems, to do things that exacerbate it. For example, this week, I was asked to speak to a group of 45 high school students about being a writer and publisher. Remember, I was a high school teacher for over twenty-five years, so this shouldn’t have been a difficult task. But I’ve been OUT of the classroom for several years, and while I THOUGHT it would be fine, the night before I was wracked with nerves. To make it worse, the morning of the presentation, all the highways were closed due to an accident, and then I also had to worry about finding a way to this school, which was about 45 minutes from my house, and did I mention that I had VOLUNTEERED to do this?

I did make it to the school on time, and then I waited in the library, trying to set up my PowerPoint with the help of the school tech until the bell rang, and all these 16 year-olds came in to see me, and you can imagine how incredibly excited they were to hear all about writing and publishing from a 60 year-old woman. It was the usual suspects: a majority of the kids were fairly apathetic and looked bored for most of the time I was speaking, two boys spent the first half of the presentation giggling and whispering to each other until I laughed at them and told them they were being distracting, and the rest were polite enough not to be rude. And then there was a group of kids near the front, mostly girls and a couple of boys, who were engaged and seemed like they were enjoying my “journey as a writer, publisher, and radio host”, and it was very nice, especially at the end when I raffled off two of my books and the winners seemed genuinely happy about getting them and asked me to sign them. BUT. There was this one girl in particular, a girl who smiled and nodded encouragingly as I went through the presentation, who laughed at my dumb jokes with what seemed like sincere appreciation, and clapped heartily for me at the end, presenting me with a thank-you card on behalf of the group. And that one young woman—she made all the difference. I don’t know her name, or anything about her, except that I wish her all good things in her life, and I’m grateful to her.

And now, in other news, here is the best marketing strategy I’ve ever seen.

I have only three words: Buzz buzz, baby.

23 thoughts on “Voluntary Anxiety”

  1. Thank you for taking me back to high school when writers would come to my English classes and I felt so lucky to hear them talk about the process of writing. They weren’t just names in our textbook but real people—in one case someone whose work I’d been reading for years, which made the experience extra cool. And think: that girl may already be a writer and you’ve encouraged her to stick with it.
    Anyway I have a weird craving for honey now.

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  6. I can’t even speak in zoom meetings with more than 10 people in them.
    On the other hand, I am now capable of asking other folks around the pickleball court if they’re up for a game. I’ve prolly met 20 people this way.
    The best beekeepers love all their girls equally.

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  7. I was a teacher too, a long time ago, and I don’t think the nerves ever leave you because each class is a kind of performance in which you try to engage your harshest critics. 🙂 I’m so glad yours went well. Fingers crossed that one or two of those young minds remember your talk and set out on the writer’s path too.

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