A few weeks ago, I presented a ZooFit talk at a library on Whidbey Island. My old stomping grounds and the place where ZooFit started getting off the ground.
I love Whidbey, and there are a lot of things I miss about it, namely the super supportive cast of other writers and authors. But one thing that was hard about living on Whidbey, people may be supportive about ME doing ZooFit, but not as many people wanted to JOIN me. So, I ventured off the island to see if a larger pond (namely Bellingham, and slightly easier access to Seattle) could help me wrangle bigger fish. Or more fish. Something like that.
But I keep coming back to Whidbey. I love Whidbey. And I loved giving my talk on Whidbey. But what I really enjoyed that day was after my presentation, sitting in a small coffee shop with Tom Trimbath and Don Scoby, both published authors (Don being another cookbook author), and recording a podcast interview about Writing on Whidbey Island. No script. No actual plan about what we would talk about. Just us shooting the breeze and having fun talking about our favorite things- writing and geeking out about everything.
It’s a bit long (close to 50 minutes), but head over to Writing on Whidbey Island to read Don’s clever blog posts reviewing author interviews, and then get the podcast as well. I think I only hit the mic once.
I’m practicing doing one thing every day that scares me. And reveling in failure from doing things that scare me. It’s funny, because most people would be terrified to do a podcast or presentation, but those are the aspects that are most fun to me. What is scary is RECORDING my presentations and SHARING them with however many others. So, that is what I’m doing now. Sharing myself, an open book, to the world. And if I get bad reactions, then I will use that as fuel for my fire to grow.