I believe in embracing embarrassment.
The first time I made a complete, monumental fool of myself was 4 years ago, atop a stage. Wooden floors, big red curtains, a grand piano. Everything you would imagine would be on a stage meant for a massive music recital, that involved multiple music schools all across the state.
I waited patiently for my turn, fidgeting, as my fingertips seemed to go numb from the cold, or nervousness. All I could think of was making sure I performed perfectly, making sure everyone in the audience appreciated me.
My performance came up. I began to sing and the trouble began. I sang and I sang and halfway through I realized I couldn’t hear myself. I felt a slight ringing in my ears. My heart started to thud, getting louder and louder by the second, so much so that I wondered if the mic could pick it up, booming across the theater.
There was a high note coming up. The song seemed to crescendo despite there being no change in my volume. Faces seemed to blur, my head seemed to fill with fuzz and I just dreaded and dreaded the note that was steadily approaching. Oh no. I thought. Oh. No. And no, there was no happy ending. I completely butchered the end of the song. Listening back to the recording my family made later I couldn’t help but compare my tone to that of a distressed goat. It was, shall I say, embarrassing.
You might think that I didn’t perform after that, or I at least avoided it. But actually, I sort of did the opposite. I thought, hey. I was okay. I didn’t do my best, but I was okay, and the world was going to move on. It didn’t seem that way immediately of course, but I realized, that if I could accept that experience, what else could I do?
I used to worry so much about how I was perceived in other people’s eyes, and I used to think we can somehow attain perfection to avoid looking anything less than flawless to other people. That’s what I believed, and now I don’t. It is completely against the biggest part of being human; being a little rough around the edges; flawed. Once we learn to laugh at ourselves, it gives others the courage to laugh at themselves too.
I still continued to perform, sometimes in front of even bigger audiences. It gave me the confidence to just work on making myself better at what I did, purely for myself, without worrying about how I seem to other people. I started to believe in embracing embarrassment. And it was freeing.
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I still plan to make edits to make the piece more cohesive, but this is what I have for now!
This is awesome! I love the development of the story throughout, it’s very strong. Your character is built so solidly and you set the stage up perfectly for when you nail your “punchline” of embracing the embarrassment. I think there may be an opportunity to change your wording slightly when you finish the story and move to your reaction and decision to embrace the embarrassment. Maybe instead of a “you may think…” you could go for something like telling us the thoughts that specifically went through your head. Did it take a few days for you to move on? I think this is a great draft and if you don’t change a thing you’ll be perfectly fine. That’s just something super nitpicky that is just a thought! Great job.
Hey! I really like the topic of this podcast, especially for how relatable it is! Everyone strives to avoid embarrassment of any kind, so I think it is really cool that you are encouraging people to embrace it because it only makes you stronger. One critique I would make is to dive deeper into how embarrassment made you feel and how you now feel “freed”.
I think this is a really great draft of the podcast. Telling a personal story or experience is a great way to establish credibility as a story teller. I think your story about struggling with a vocal performance is something that many people fear, even if they don’t perform on a regular basis. As far as editing suggestions I would maybe considering developing that second to last paragraph a little bit more.