The Confidence Bucket List

I recently discovered this great blog, Brittany Herself, by humorist, fashionista, and womanhood advocate Brittany. Her posts are beyond funny and insightful and I’m really enjoying her writing style. Last week she posted some body blogging prompts for August and I was inspired by one of them: The Confidence Bucket List: 10 things you hope to one day have the confidence to do. It’s taken me a while to come up with 10 but here they are:

Start my own business: I have a lot of ideas for my own business and there is one that’s been really taken form in my head yet I have taken nearly zero steps to achieve it and I recognize it’s because I don’t believe I can pull it off.
Get a tattoo: I’ve been wanting to get a tattoo for over a decade now. I haven’t settled on a design but one of the reasons that I haven’t gone through with it is that I have very strong religious family members whose opinions I care about (although I am not religious at all) and who would strongly object to it. I wish I had the confidence to not give a sh*t, but alas, I don’t.
Participate in community theater: When I was in elementary school I was the first one to volunteer for school plays. I did tons and I remember loving it. I can’t quite pinpoint when I lost confidence in performing. I am a great public speaker (I teach at college level for crying out loud) but I can’t bring myself to show up at a casting. I wish I did.
Karaoke: I have backed my friends but I wish I had the guts to do it on my own. I can’t sing. I am not terrible but I am not good either. I wish I had the confidence to make a fool of myself.
Buy a stranger a drink at a bar: Whoa! This is a hard one. This has to do with how I view myself and how I think others view me. Although I am starting to see myself under a much better light I still don’t see myself as an attractive person and I fear rejection like a plague.
Ask someone on a date: Not that there is anyone at this particular moment that I want to go out with but in general I know I have met people who I would have liked to go out with but I never asked. I currently have a profile on an online-dating site but I have not actually subscribed yet and one reason is that I am afraid of making contact. I really need to work on this.
Post a full body picture of myself in a swimsuit (preferably a two-piece) online: This is the closest I have gotten. I had initially taken the picture full body but I saw the cellulite on my legs and couldn’t bring myself to post it. A bikini? NO WAY! I wish I were more proud of the body I have. It works. It lets me do many things. It should be enough. But it ain’t.
To use my elevator speech more often: Like I said, I am a good public speaker and I have my 30 sec, 1-min, and 2-min speech pretty well structured but somehow I have a hard time talking to others. And here’s the problem… my fear is that other people are more interesting than I am. Stupid talk, I know. We all have something interesting about ourselves. Intellectually, I know I am being irrational but I just can’t take the extra step I need.
Produce videos and/or podcasts: A lot of times when I have an idea for a blogpost I start it out loud. I have a conversation with myself about what I want to say and the questions that readers may have and every time I think “this would come across much better in audio, I should do a video, or a podcast.” Unfortunately, by the end of my musings, I end up simply writing up a post, at best… at worst, those stories never see the light of day.
Take a Solo Road Trip: This one is more generic bucket list than confidence list but here’s the thing: I know I can travel alone. I do a lot of things alone, go to the movies, eat at a restaurant, travel to conferences, etc. I can do that. What I wish I had the confidence to do is travel solo and interact with the locals. What’s been stopping me from taking the car and just driving for a month or so is that I don’t want to return home and realize that I made no friends during my trip. I hope someday to have the confidence to do that.