I didn’t attend this particular Restaurant Review. I went to the DC Solo Performance Lab with Laura Zam. There will be a performance on March 16th at the DC Arts Center located in Adams Morgan. This is some hard work, writing and performing this piece. Hard, but necessary. Last week, I sat in the New Orleans Cafe, eating Alligator Gumbo and editing articles. I didn’t want to do the work, but it got done. Deadlines for both the Magazine of Yoga and the Performance Lab were right on top of each other, and I didn’t have time to whine about it. Produce, produce, produce. Life can wait. Feelings can wait. Do the work. Do it now.I am scared it won’t be good enough. Do it anyway.I don’t want to be laughed at.Do it anyway.What if I misrepresent what I am really trying to say?Do it anyway.The following list is the negative side of what can stop us from producing artistically. We (a group of students, plus Kat Lissard and Jim Sparrell) created this list during a workshop called “Write to Think” at Goddard College.

• Imposter syndrome

• Privacy – once written not in my control
• Fear of external judgment
• Not good enough
• Perfectionism
• Not having the right words
• Good intentions to write – waiting for the ideal situation
• If only…
• Who is the audience – who am I writing to or for
• Over preparation and over research
• Time management
• Fear of lying
• Self-censorship
• List making
• Comparing yourself to other writers or thinkers
• Self-fulfilling failure promotion
• Failure before you start
• Dumbing yourself down
• Don’t know what to write
• Don’t know where to start
• Needing perfect opening lines
• Introduction and Conclusion
• Data/info overload

• Laziness

• Procrastination/waiting for the best moment

I think, during my dinner at the cafe last Wednesday, 35% of the list tried to attach itself to what I was doing. Who am I to write for a living? How dare I question the authority I claim to respect? I can’t even make a scant 100,000.00 a year as a best selling author/singer/actor, who I am to say things like, “I know”… I am such a dork for talking about making money doing this stuff! How unrealistic!But I kept writing. I finished first one, then the other assignment I set myself to finish. I didn’t feel like I conquered the world, but I passed my own test. Can I write against the doubts that try to make me stop? My faith says yes. I am a writer. I am a singer. I am an artist. I am going to continue this journey I have started to its glorious end.I can, have, and will do this work.

Yours truly as Mary Wells in”The Motown Journey”