Launching is always nerve-wracking

In my mid-20's, I planned this amazing wine and cheese party and invited a bunch of friends and coworkers. I spent hours putting together the perfect playlist, testing the exact right lighting, picking out and arranging the cheese and charcuterie, pairing the wine, making the little information cards with calligraphy pens (that told the origin of the cheese and what pairs the best).

Everything was perfect.

...except that nobody showed up. Nobody. * To this day, I remember how that felt. Sitting there hour after hour, not touching the cheese (in case someone shows!) but drinking too much wine. Eventually going to bed drunk and alone, feeling like a huge failure of a human being. Thank Gawd there wasn't social media back then.

It's this memory that still feeds my anxiety around throwing an event or launching something...anything. I'm always afraid that I'll be sitting alone in a perfectly lit room, listening to Ella Fitzgerald, hungry and drunk.

In spite of this crippling anxiety, I've thrown many parties since - most of them successful. I've also launched and promoted many things I've made or been part of making. Not all of these have been resounding successes, but never quite the disaster I lay awake imagining.

I think it's the love and care I put into these things that makes the stakes seem so high. There is always a piece of myself I give to the world in everything and with that comes extreme vulnerability. If the world rejects that thing I put out into it, it feels like I'm being rejected. I can't quite unbundle the thing from my own sense of worth and value (even though, logically, that's quite ridiculous).

That Eminem song goes through my head over and over. You know, that one that goes, "You only get one shot, do not miss your chance to blow this opportunity comes once in a lifetime."

I know all of this sounds terrible and awful and painful and it probably seems like it would be a good thing to work on and get over, but here's the thing...I think it's okay. It may even make things better in a weird way.

Maybe all of that anxiety and nervousness and feeling of vulnerability helps me focus in on the details that make things special. And when the party is a success, or the launch goes well, it feels way better than if I had taken it for granted. You can't quite feel the highs unless you know what the lows feel like, too.

But yeah...launching. It creates all of the feels.

I just had to share that.

---

• I guess I could be thankful that nobody showed up as opposed to one or two people...because it saved me the humiliation and I could smile and lie to people if they asked, "It was nice. You missed some fantastic 🧀 !"