Sign up for the open mic. Your hands will shake, your voice might crack, and you’ll be glad you went.

Nerves are not a sign that you are unready. Your body treats attention like danger and floods you with the same chemicals whether the room is hostile or friendly, and it does that to everyone who has ever walked up there. Most of what feels enormous from the inside barely shows from the seats. The shaking is also not the part you remember afterwards.

If there is a night coming up, you could put your name down for one song or one poem. Keep it short, tell one person you are going, and let that be the whole plan.