“Well Excited and Scared”

   So today was the annual musical workshop at my school, or, as I think of it, the calm before the storm. Musicals are one of my favorite things and getting cast in one of my school’s would mean so much to me. But I get terrible nerves at musical auditions, which is weird for me because I am never nervous about performing. At the workshop I’m in a group and feel really good about my audition. Then the big day rolls around and the caterpillars have sprouted into butterflies that end up so huge in my stomach by the time it is my turn to sing that they are gigantic Norwegian Ridgebacks racing each other around my intestines. To try and fight my nerves I have two solutions: practice like my life depends on it and make a list of the reasons why auditioning has me sweating bullets while opening night I am as cool as a cucumber in the fridgerator.


1. Making the musical would be like Christmas on my birthday come early with mini blizzards- this kind of reward demands a lot of pressure and it freaks me out.


2. Everyone, well, not absolutely everyone, but enough of the people who try out at my school are really good singers and strong actors- being personally better suited to acting whilst loving, yet not totally excelling at singing puts me a football field behind the majority of my choir competition.


3. The people watching- I am a colossal fan of audiences and in other situations they never unnerve me, but at auditions there is a different atmosphere. Everyone knows that the more I suck the better their chances are, so even my best friend, who really wants me to do well also has a tiny part of her who hopes I am worse than her. And the female completion is cut throat. The people I don’t know or possibly don’t like are probably rooting for spectacular failure. I try not to want them to not succeed, but I am still guilty of the occasionally uncharitable thought. I can’t help it. Twenty to thirty girls have to be cut. That’s how it is.


   This year I will, I will conquer my nerves and land myself a roll in the musical. I know I can do it. (hey Google searcher, I don’t judge your ego boosts).


When snakes are born with two heads, they fight each other for food.