Do you want to do some filming this afternoon? My husband calls out kindly to me.
Yes, I reply, a note of resignation in my voice. I love my pony; I love chattering about my work but I really do not like The Filming. Especially the type of filming that means I’m riding my lovely horse. To me, that’s traversing sacred ground. Poking noses all up in your riding business with The Lenses. I’d really rather not.
I’ve become familiar, very practiced with the talking to The Camera behind The Computer. Once, if not multiple times a day, I see my own face pop up on the screen, have to deal with my antipodean tones booming back into my ear balls.
It used to be that The Speaking To The Camera brought me out in hot sweats. For someone who always had a lot to say, suddenly I had none. The Speaking To The Camera will do that to you. Make your words crystalize over as they start to leave your mouth.
Sometimes, the Word Fairies like to mess with you. I do not find them funny. They catch your words and rearrange them, making sensible and rational thoughts turn into unsensible and irrational sentences. They’re really pesky beasts.
When I first started my business, all those years ago I had neither the camera nor the money. I also didn’t have a blank wall to film against (our quite small house sports the cluttered look). Instead, if you were to drill a hole in my door and poke your eyeball through, you’d see me sat in my mother in laws living room, perched upon a desk, hovering somewhere between the heat pump and the floor, my laptop a meter or so away piled atop a pile of books.
The background wall was peach.
If you think starting out is glamour, I can assure you, it is not.
Why am I telling you this?
Because all of those hot sweats over all those many years have got me to a place where I can comfortably sit in front of the camera and press go. Which means when it comes to new experiences- like filming more with my horse rather than me resting on a chair- I recognize the feelings as similar to what I’ve felt before. And from here, I tell myself, the only way is through.
In the process of learning anything, you have to let yourself have the experience. If you can tick the box that tells you that you’re safe, the next biggest impediment to progress is the ability to let yourself learn.
The ability to let yourself feel uncomfortable and do the thing anyway. The ability to let it be frustrating and to know that you’ll get better over time. The ability to release the need to be perfect and to let the word fairies mess with what you have to say. To continue on in spite of.
At the start of my ride today, as my husband hit record, my brain told me I’d forgotten how to ride. I almost say the words out loud- I’ve forgotten how to ride!- but then I stop myself before the thoughts take form.
I will not give that thought a voice because it isn’t true. Just because I feel different, doesn’t mean that somethings wrong.
It just means there’s a person in the arena with a camera, when normally there isn’t. And all I have to do is practice what I know.
The only way is through.
Onwards.
❤️ Jane
