The other day, I went to check out an open mic, and basically people sign up to share their short stories, their poetry, stuff like that.

And I'm sitting there soaking it all in, enjoying each one as they went up on stage.

And eventually this girl makes her way up.

The first thing she does is she tells the room,

hey, I've never done this before, but I've always wanted to, so here I am.

She takes out her phone and begins reading some of her poems.

And pretty quickly, two things stuck out to me.

One is she was brilliant.

Just so incredibly talented that I'm thinking,

man, if she keeps doing this, she's going to find herself in some crazy places, she's really

going to make an impact.

That was the first thing.

And the second, as I sat there and watched, was that I noticed that her hands were visibly

shaking.

I was pretty close to this stage.

And I could see this happening to the point where she had to place one on top of the other,

right, to keep the hand that was holding her phone from bouncing around while she read.

That's how visibly nervous she was.

And immediately my mind went down this road,

reflecting back on the moments I've had just like that,

because, man, I've been there,

where you're both determined and

...