I did not fuck it up.

You know when you have a bunch of things coming up and you have to think about them all the time and do a bunch of stuff for them but it gets to a point where you've done everything you can do and all you have left to do is wait?

AND THE WAITING IS EFFING KILLING YOU?

So, yeah - that.

That was what was plaguing me last week when I wrote that thing about punching people in the throat when they have the temerity to say things like, "Do something every day that scares you." and what not.

I wasn't so much overwhelmed with the Scared as I was with the Waiting.

I really just wanted to get that event DONE but there was nothing left to do but wait.

So, wait I did. I waited and I stressed and I created redundant To Do lists and then rewrote my To Do lists and then prepped and rehearsed and overdid my stressing out until Bubba took me by the shoulders, looked deep into my eyes and was all, "Don't fuck it up."

And hoooooooooooooo boy howdy - did I laugh!

See, much like the good old, "Come on, peckerhead" encouragement I've shared with you all in the past, a seriously and meaningfully posed "Don't fuck it up." is just as effective at breaking the spell of whatever is plaguing my addled mind.

It gets me to laugh. It gets me to loosen the hell up. It gets me out of my head which becomes this scary place where all I can imagine are the one hundred ways I'm going to completely and irretrievably shame myself in whatever situation I'm moving ever so slowly toward.

In this case I was projecting myself to a winery tasting room filled with holiday shoppers staring wide-eyed at me and my first ever assembled booth for my first ever business, judging harshly as it all collapsed in a catastrophic display of ultimate failure - PayPal card reader dongle not working, micro gardens crashing to the floor, MacBook erroring out left and right, phone battery croaking, jars of pickles and jams hitting concrete in a sticky vinegary heap, Duchess being towed out of metered parking, boobs falling out of my shirt, jeans suddenly ripping in half, boots skidding uncontrollably across the slippery floor - you name it, I'd imagined it happening.

And sweating. Don't forget the endless, shirt soaking, small child drowning sweating I'd totally be doing because that was, in my mind, going to be shameful to say the least.

And then none of these things happened.

Nope. Nothing crashed to the ground. Nothing errored out (OK, PayPal Here didn't work 100%, but I managed just fine). Nothing ran out of a charge. Nothing was towed, popped out of a shirt, ripped free of any pants, skid across a floor to its demise or failed in any tangible way. And no one outwardly judged me - at least not that I could absorb through all the commotion of "Ooh! Can you teach me how to grow vegetables?" that was going on.

Instead - people were way cool. My booth looked good. I sold things. I met people. Friends came to say hi. I drank wine (bonus of doing an event at a winery). I tasted other vendors' food. I parked right out in front of the venue at a meter that I could reload via my cell phone.  I talked about organic gardening for five hours.

I daresay that it went...well.

Yes, let's say that. Let's say that it went well and I'm also really pretty happy that my "scary thing of the day" for last Saturday didn't kill me.

Because, while I've had it with "Do something every day that scares you.", I definitely embrace the concept of "What doesn't kill you, makes you stronger."

Even if "stronger" only means that I am now confident that I can lift a five gallon bucket full of sand without re-injuring my previously dislocated shoulder while drinking a glass of wine with the other hand.

Yeah - I think debuting my business at an event that encourages drinking by the vendors was an excellent, albeit unplanned, move.

Either way - I did not fuck it up, so yay for that.

And now I hope to also not fuck up the first finals I've taken in 12 years or the term projects that precede those finals. This week.

Ugh.