Do it scared. Do it because you can. Do it because you’re only you for one lifetime, and there’s no time to waste.
The note I left my boyfriend telling him I loved him for the first time is still stuck on his fridge.
The reason I started dating my first love at 18, and learned all I did from that relationship, was because they were brave enough to walk up to me and ask me what book I was reading, and request to sit next to me.
I worked my first real journalism job because I reached out to someone I had known from middle school who I hadn’t spoken to since we were 11, who was working at that publication, and she ended up helping me get hired.
The start of all my greatest friendships have been because someone walked up to me, or I walked up to someone, and said hello. Even the friendships that ended or went sour, I’m forever thankful for.
I started dancing again after eight years away, because my roommate, who I barely knew at the time, asked me to be a part of a piece she was choreographing, and I took a chance on saying “yes,” even though I was terrified. I performed anyway, knowing my dancing was likely imperfect. My feet didn’t quite remember how to point, and I couldn’t lift my leg as high, and I knew that no one in the audience was going to jump up and throw roses at my feet. But it just didn’t matter, because I was up there anyway, using my body for all it was worth, to tell a story in movement.
When I was 16 I gave my number to a boy I was hopelessly crushing on. He texted me to say, “Hey, I don’t mean to be a d*ck, but I’m kind of seeing someone else.” I was utterly crushed. And then I got over it, and walked away glad to know that I could definitively put that crush to bed.
I applied for a job at a big Colorado publication, and got rejected. Then, I applied for an internship at the same big Colorado publication, and got rejected again. However, I had gained an arsenal of valuable application materials curated for future jobs at other publications, and I found myself very, very happily writing instead for HerCampus—a publication that feels like a warm hug, and that ended up being exactly what I needed this semester.
What I’m trying to say is: do it anyway.
Do. It. Anyway. Do it when you’re scared. Do it when you think you might get rejected. Do it when it might not go well, and will become a dramatic journal entry you’ll laugh at when you’re 45. Do it because it might lead you somewhere great that you haven’t even considered yet. Do it because it freaks you out. Do it because it’ll teach you how to hurt, and heal, and grow.
Tell them they make your heart flutter. Apply for that pipe dream job. Fail forward. Gloriously embarrass yourself in the name of living this life filled to the brim with experiencing, and know that I’ll be doing it along with you.