I’ve been trying, lately, to do more things out of my comfort zone. Which is what led me, earlier this week, to a poetry reading at a small local bookshop. The event was listed as free and close by so I decided to go. I’ve been trying to be less precious about what I choose to spend time with and just spend more energy taking action and less time deliberating over things.

I was totally out of my depth here. I sat in an audience of less than ten people about ten feet from the presenting poets. The whole event made me realize I’m not particularly emotionally evolved. While I admired the vulnerability the poets displayed, being so close to it and witnessing it made me uncomfortable on some level. These pieces were raw and personal, and being so close to strangers exposing themselves so earnestly felt unfamiliar to me. So, I felt a bit awkward being there.

But it was also kind of exhilarating. The earnestness of the whole event was refreshing to me, even if it was a lot for my system to handle. I spend Monday through Friday in an office filled with cynical bastards who brag about their indifference to the world and other people. It’s a tough environment and surviving it has been a point of pride for me and has shown me that I am stronger than I once thought. But it’s left its scars on me. Existing in that toxic office has worn me down, numbed me out, and made the whole world feel a little more indifferent, cold, and grey.

Attending events like this, where openness was not just accepted but encouraged, reminded me that the world isn’t entirely angry and unfair.

After each of the poets had read a selection of their poems, they took questions from the audience. One of the questions they took was from another young writer. She had, she explained to us, just emerged from a writer’s block. But on the other side of the block she was finding that everything was coming out angry. She wondered if that was a cause for concern.

The advice she was given from the panel was, I think, applicable to life in general and not just creative pursuits. She was told that it was enough that she was producing again. That she should spend more time pouring her feelings onto the page in whatever shape they may take and less time judging. She was also told not to worry about creating “great” poetry that could change the world. It is simply enough, they said, to capture her authentic emotional reality. She could not control the reaction to her work, so best not to stress about that and just get to producing.

This made me think of my life. I spend too much time judging the way I show up into the world and analyzing myself and situations to death. I put pressure onto events to have more resonance than they do, or I try to push the outcomes in certain ways. But just as the poet can’t control how their work is received, I can’t control how people react to my presence. And ultimately it would be fairer to myself and productive to everyone else if I just concentrated on showing up more authentically and earnestly, rather than trying to force a certain reality into being.