Just Show Up

      A few weeks ago I was feeling very overwhelmed and uninspired about this semester. I was not producing any work and I was feeling like I may not ever have a creative urge again in my life. There was one event on my calendar that I was truly looking forward to, but I was a bit anxious at the same time. I wanted to attend a meet and greet for all the students at UCF that were producing student films this semester. I’m not really a film student, but I had just completed my first video project last semester and I was HOOKED. I was excited at the prospect of being a part of a film crew and working under a director. This meet and greet was designed so that student film makers could meet potential crewmen to work on their productions. New situations where I’m required to talk to people make me super nervous but I knew I couldn’t pass this up, so I just went. I walked onto the sound stage having little idea of what to expect and I tagged along behind a group of people, listening to producers pitch their film ideas. Eventually I got brave enough to approach the film students by myself and make conversation about what they were creating. It felt great to talk shop with fellow creators, hearing about their different ideas and shooting styles. I had walked into that room feeling scared and insecure and left feeling like a professional with great things on the horizon. It completely changed my mood from just hours prior.

     The phrase “just show up” has been key for those days when I begin over thinking every little thing. I have a tendency to get overwhelmed easily and “wake up and go to school” quickly transforms into a harrowing to-do list that looks like:

• Crawl out of bed
• Desperately search for matching clothes
• Put on socks
• Stare into the fridge for awhile
• Find the coffee
• Make coffee
• Put sugar in coffee
• Put cream in coffee
• Find the bagels
• Cut open a bagel
• Toast the bagel
• Find the cream cheese
• Open the cream cheese
• Find a knife
• Cut a chunk of cream cheese
• Spread the cream cheese
• Find a jacket
• Put on the jacket
• Zip up the jacket…etc.

     I think you see where I’m going here. When I’m depressed, every single nuance of the most basic task becomes its own line item on a foreboding to-do list. When I’m in a positive mental space, this entire list gets summed up as “get ready for work” and it seems like one simple task. There are many days during my deeper bouts of depression that I cringe at how many steps are involved in cooking scrambled eggs, so I choose to lie in bed for hours to avoid the insurmountable task of preparing breakfast.

      Now, apply this same model to a higher order task such as attending an art school critique and you have the ingredients for an epic meltdown, or in the best case scenario, an anxiety attack coupled with severe aversion techniques. Not only must I go through the above mentioned to do list, but the end result will be me sitting in a class, having the work I have half heartedly created (or in many cases, not created at all…meaning I get to spend the entire 3 hours feeling guilty for my failure to be a useful participant) being subject to the criticism of others. Some days it feels easier to just not go. But then, the next week I feel even more behind and upset.

     When I feel myself starting down this road of total avoidance, I have learned to employ the “just show up” rule. No matter how I am feeling, whether I have done my homework or not, whether I think I will have a good time or not, I just show up. I try not to have any preconceived expectations for what my experience will be like and I have found that often times, my worst fears are not realized. In fact, in most cases, I leave feeling better than when I got there. This works for my job, school, and even social events. It’s true that sometimes I will just show up and have a severe anxiety attack or feel overwhelmed, so I just leave. But compared to the times where I feel affirmed, connected, joyous, relieved, and inspired, it seems worth it to keep putting myself out there to see where the road takes me. When I stay at home in my mental space of avoidance, it sometimes takes days for my mood to shift, but often times when I leave my house to do something positive for myself, the mood turns around much more quickly.

     This tactic keeps me putting one foot in front of the other no matter how depressed I get. You just never know what person or event will make your entire perspective shift, but one thing is certain: if you stay at home out of fear, you will never find out. So the next time you find yourself coming up with fifteen thousand disaster scenarios of what might happen if you go out to catch a movie with your best friend, just show up and don’t hold yourself to the expectation of having a great time. Show up knowing it could go either way, and just notice how you feel once you get there. If you have a crappy time, so what? Is it really that much worse than staying home alone? And maybe, just maybe, you will have a nice time and remember why this is your best friend in the first place.