Preparing to bare all onstage

If you are my friend on Facebook, you may have seen that in April I applied to be a participant speaker at the upcoming ICON9 conference, a conference for professional illustrators.

This felt like a crazy thing for me to do. I wanted to attend this conference to learn about the field of illustration and to be among the real pros. I went onto Twitter to see who was attending the conference so I could allay some of my fears by befriending people in advance or at least familiarizing myself with who would be there.

I saw a call for proposals for their Kaleidoscope, where select participants do a Pecha Kucha style presentation. The format is a five-minute talk accompanied by 20 slides. The presenter has 15 seconds per slide, and the presentation rolls along automatically.

I’ve always wanted to do this so after asking my Facebook friends if I should go for it, I applied.

Honestly, I secretly hoped that I wouldn’t be accepted. I am a seasoned public speaker and I love being onstage, but the thought of being in front of hundreds of hip and savvy illustrators made me want to…well, I’ll spare you the details but let’s say the feeling is one of intense fear.

I also knew that prepping for such a project would take precious time while I was in Paris.

So when the time came for them to announce the chosen speakers, I tentatively opened my email. And guess what? There was an email from ICON9, congratulating me on being one of six people chosen to present.

Holy CARP!

At first I was pretty excited. Then completely freaked out, feeling the kind of terror that infuses your veins and makes you all jumpy. I thought of all the work I’d have to do to prepare.

I spent a couple of days bathed in terror before I realized that wasn’t sustainable. I didn’t want my time in Paris to be full of fear and dread. It became clear to me that I would have to change my self-perception in order to feel okay about doing this presentation.

Instead of being a quaking newbie illustrator who doesn’t even know how to use Photoshop and Illustrator, I had to think of myself as someone who has something to say about embarking on a new creative field. I had to claim my place on stage and

Wish me luck as I finalize my slides, practice my presentation and share my topic – How I Ditched Conventional Advice to Launch an Unlikely Career as an Illustrator – in Austin on Saturday, July 9th.

It’s so odd that the things we want the most are also the things that scare us silly. Why is that? I don’t know. But I do know that the things we crave aren’t just the things that feel good and allow us to stay the same. Much as it challenges us, we crave change. We crave those situations that allow us to inhabit a new sense of ourselves. We love those circumstances that mark us as new versions of ourselves.

I’m so grateful I took the plunge and applied for something far-fetched. I want these situations that grow me. If you are ever on the fence about whether you should apply for something, please do it. The act of submitting your ideas is always valuable, and if you get the thing, you will be invited to step up and into a new version of yourself. Daunting but so rewarding.

When I take the stage in July in Austin, for sure I will still be scared. But I will also be prepared and I will have to claim the new version of myself, the version that absolutely has a place among the professional illustrators.

The post Preparing to bare all onstage appeared first on Original Impulse .