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Outside the ol’ comfort zone

This morning as I was scrolling through my Facebook newsfeed I happened across a post one of my online friends had made to a group I’d not yet heard of – a local writers’ group.

Even though doing so terrifies me, I joined the group.

The whole thing is scary on a couple of levels. First off, becoming part of this group means that I’ll need to fight my shyness and meet a whole bunch of new people. That’s been a challenge at the local book club I joined, but I’m hoping that it will be valuable in the long run.

As an aside, I’m quite proud of myself for going to the last book club meeting on my own (my husband wasn’t feeling well). If I’d known all the people it wouldn’t have been a big deal at all, but only having met a couple of them once before was a different matter. It wasn’t easy – I was actually on the verge of tears at times, I was so frustrated with myself – but I did it!

Back to the writers’ group.

On top of the shyness issue, the idea of sharing my writing with a group so that they can offer their critique is freakout-worthy on its own. Yikes! For some reason it feels more terrifying than blogging (which I’m very comfortable doing) or writing my column (which probably should be terrifying, but hasn’t been).

But I’m doing it. At least I’m going to give it a shot.

I read somewhere that you should do something that scares you every day. I guess I’ll consider today’s scary thing to have been done!

What have you done recently to move yourself out of your comfort zone?

Laurel Storey, CZT – Certified Zentangle Teacher. Writer, reader, tangler, iPhoneographer, cat herder, learner of French and Italian, crocheter, needle felter, on-and-off politics junkie, 80s music trivia freak, ongoing work in progress.