When I feel uncomfortable about doing something new I find it useful to reflect on whether I feel vulnerable because it’s unfamiliar or because I’ve crossed a - perhaps unacknowledged - boundary.
I’m confident this time it’s the former, so I've resisted the urge to delete this and script myself more tightly.
The truth is I prefer writing because I can edit it. I can ensure that what I say is a true reflection of what I think, and that the tone is exactly as I intend - in my experience, speaking is far more high stakes.
I also can’t always rely on an interference-free connection between my brain and mouth - halfway through a sentence I can, and do, get distracted by my own thoughts and sometimes, when this happens, the words I want to say get jammed and leave my silent mouth flapping like a panicked goldfish.
At other times I’m so fluent I amaze myself. I wish I could predict which Nicola is about to show up whenever I open my mouth…
Most of the time my speaking sits at a midpoint between these two extremes, as it does today in this recording. My thoughts are a little disjointed and undeveloped but not entirely incomprehensible: it will do.
So it occurs to me that while this challenge is ostensibly to post some audio, the apprehension of pressing of new buttons and navigating another part of this platform obscures its true nature: to put something out into the world that is extremely imperfect, so imperfect in fact that it might be objectively bad.
This is the part when I remind myself how excitement lights up the exact same part of the brain as anxiety.
Huge thanks to
for putting this challenge together and pushing me out of my comfort zone. You can find out more about it here:
and to
(a Substack bestseller dontchaknow ;-) whose voice note this afternoon prompted me to get involved.
Transitions