Dancing in the Uncomfortable Zone

For those of you who have been following along and already know that I can’t do anything outside of my comfort zone without overthinking, overplanning, and just neurotically obsessing (and for those of you who know now), I’m cancelling my Pod 51 hotel room (which I rebooked for $28 less and will re-cancel). I figured out that I would have to work about 18 hours at the festival to just cover the hotel and sure I can do it, but I’m cheap, I mean frugal, and since I probably won’t be working that many hours, I would essentially be paying to work. I am going for the experience and not the money, but paying to work is just kind of stupid (insert my mother’s “I told you so”). If I want to pay that kind of money, I’ll just buy a 1-day ticket and not work at all. More on why I am not doing that below.

Final decision: work all day Saturday, take the train home, repeat on Sunday. Sleep all day Monday.

I summed that up nicely in one sentence, but it took many more sentences for me to finally decide on the final-ish plan. Shout out to the friends who endured that with me and also to you all for sticking with this blog.

Anyhow, after making my decision to cancel but before I actually did it, I thought I’d see what the cards said.

I asked: What is my current situation and what should I do? I used the Midnight City Tarot because it seemed appropriate.

Interpretation: The first card is telling me that I shouldn’t spend the money on the hotel room especially since we are having our electrical panel replaced this weekend (owning a home sucks), and there are a whole lot of other things I want to spend it on that are more fun than renting a bed and bathroom for about 7 hours during which I would mostly be asleep. The second is telling me not to go forward with my hotel plans and instead, get this, to take the train home. I mean there’s literally a train station in the image.

Thanks again, universe, for your voice of logic and cheapness.

This whole thing is kind of weird because usually I’ll take any opportunity to go to New York. I’d love to spend a night and/or stay forever.

And I’ve worked at festivals and events before (see flyers below I dug up yesterday along with a whole lot of memories, good and bad, while going through the boxes our flooded basement ruined–remember what I said about being a homeowner). I actually prefer to work than just attend. I get bored and sleepy really easily if I’m just hanging out. No offense to the friends I go with, you are super awesome to be around, I’m just really tired.

This one, though, is way out of my comfort zone because I’ll be alone and also coming home pretty late on the train. And I have no idea what to wear! I mean, seriously, what do I wear? To make it more uncomfortable, I’m not really familiar with the scene, other than my Spotify lists, which I do listen to all the time. Yeah it’s an EDM festival. If you smell smoke, it’s just my goth card on fire in the corner.

But I am going and am very thankful to the friend who shared the opportunity with me. I’m still going to overthink and overplan, and if you think I’m not going to keep looking for that perfect hotel deal, you’re clearly not paying attention.

So tell me, what are some of the things you’ve done outside of your comfort zone?

What did you do to calm your anxiety?

How did it work out?

I want to know for real. That said, if it kind of sucked, maybe hold off on telling me until Monday.

I read something that said, “Life begins where you’re comfort zone ends,” and I think we can all agree that whoever wrote that is an idiot.