[Cycle 30 Waitlist] a scary story for you

Greetings, fabulous people of the waitlist!

If you're getting this email, you've signed up to be the first to know when the last cycle of The Audacity Project opens. The answer is, it will open for you (and only for you) on March 2nd. No need to add to your calendar, you'll be getting an email from me that morning with a link to sign up (and $100 monies off the price of enrollment!).

Errbody else gets to enroll the following week, if there's any room left.

For now, I like to take this time leading up to enrollment to tell you stories, answer your questions if you have em, and get to know you a little before we begin our work. Here's today's morsel:

I want to know how this sounds to you...

Let's say there is a conference of some kind. You really want to go, but you can't afford the cost of a ticket AND travel, so you ask if you can work for free in exchange for attending the conference.

You also agree to share a room with a stranger (not a suite...a bedroom with two beds in it). You will also pay for your international travel, not to mention the cost of sustenance for the two weeks you'll be gone. You have just quit your job and have no plans for getting a new one. Food in this particular location is famously expensive.

Oh, also it's really 2.5 weeks, because you'll need to buy a hotel room for a couple of days beforehand to deal with the jet lag so you can make a good impression during your worktrade in exchange for being allowed to be present. Also you have never met any of these people, not a single solitary one of them. The organizers are a little wary of you wanting so badly to be there, but they agree to let you come under these conditions.

Does that sound like something you'd like to do, or does it give you heart palpitations? Maybe it does both?

I've just told you the story of my very first Irish Aerial Dance Festival.

It was a massive risk, both socially and emotionally. It was a massive expense for me, even with the work trade I'd negotiated. I felt embarrassed about how overly eager I must be coming across. It was the adult vulnerability equivalent of asking "can I sit with you?" holding your stupid lunch tray with it's stupid carton of milk on it.

Frankly, it was a terrifying thing to do. Of course I was terrified. But nothing frightened me more than the option of staying home and living in quiet desperation. That was the REAL horror. So I went.

As a direct result of that single trip, I had international performance and teaching work for the next 9 years.

Read that again.

This is not an email telling you that attending a festival will change the entire course of your career. It probably won't. This is a message about trusting the desire that is keeping you up at night, and your own ability to honor it. That WILL change the course of your career.

Throughout my 20s and 30s, I kept a quote posted on all of my notebooks, that read: "Di fortes annuo". It is an extremely incorrect translation of "the Gods favor the bold" into Latin.

It wasn't correct, but I knew what it meant, so I kept using it. It didn't matter that it was imperfect, it got the job done. And its job was to remind me that I could change my life any time I wanted, by the sheer force of my own Audacity.

And that is what we are doing here. It is my absolute honor to meet you.

I'll be in touch tomorrow with a question for ya! In the meantime, if you have any questions about The Audacity Project, you can reply here and ask me, or check out the FAQ.

Don't go back to sleep.

xoRachel