Confidence, tricked

Do you consider yourself a brave person?  Courage can come and go so fleetingly, I’m not sure it’s a permanent character trait.

Some people have recently said that it was brave of me to choose a different direction.  It didn’t particularly feel that way; the change was exciting and I did it without dwelling on it.

But yesterday I started feeling a bit uncomfortable and weird; something was bothering me and I didn’t know what.  That was the worst bit: since I didn’t know what I was nervous about, I became nervous about everything, including my recent career decision.

The headmistress of my daughter’s school asked me a few weeks ago to be the DJ / MC at their Christmas disco, which is this afternoon.  Since then, the idea of entertaining 150 kids aged between 4 and 10 has been exhilarating.  I have even hired a spangly red disco jacket and it looks great.  I had excitedly suggested lots of ideas of how to spice up the occasion.

One of these will be leading a dance of the Macarena.  This morning when I was checking some You Tube clips, I realised that I don’t know the moves at all, and I can’t stand the Macarena anyway.  And I was really quite worried about it.

That was the culprit, and it was infecting everything – my rock solid confidence, tricked by the Macarena!

There’s only one thing for it.  I have to trick my confidence back on track again. I’m going to go back home and, until I’m an expert, practice the Macarena.  In my red disco jacket.

I am clearly not a brave person if I am scared by the Macarena.  But nor am I a fearful person.  There are no such people.  Just normal people who sometimes have brave days, and sometimes don’t.