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.

And it's 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 uh was that i noticed that

her hands were visibly shaking i was pretty close to this stage um 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 terrified at the same time but somehow

the desire to try outweighs the fear just enough for you to find yourself in that exact situation

just enough that you step into a foreign world, still wondering whether you made

the right move, you know, every step of the way from the car, the building, onto this stage

until you hit the point where, okay, well, now you can't turn back. Now you're here. You can't leave.

And the thing is, and this is what was so beautiful to me,

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