Random Mondays: Let it Ride!

A few years ago my dad made a joke. I can’t remember the context but the line was, “she’ll be the one in the corner throwing the dice and yelling LET IT RIDE!”

And something about that stuck with me. I couldn’t tell you why, because I can be the kind of person that holds onto control for dear life. Throwing the dice and yelling let it ride is the least amount of control you can have on anything.

But sometimes you just have to let it ride.

Fear is paralyzing. Rightfully so, sometimes fear stops us from doing stupid shit. Fear is what got us from caveman to here, so we owe it to something. But sometimes I wonder if fear is what’s kept us from going to space more and we owe it nothing for that.

Today’s source of fear is brought to you by the wide launch of the film’s Instagram, the film’s Twitter, the film’s website and the film’s Facebook. That’s 4 things ready for wide launch in one night. I can’t even get a selfie ready for Instagram launch in that amount of time.

But it had to be done. I promised myself I would do it. I promised our team I would do it, so not only were they counting on my to do right by the team, I was counting on me to do right by our team.

I agonized over that post. I thought of what I wanted to say, I read it over and over. I thought what I’d written to intro the page sounded stupid so I rewrote it. Then I rewrote it again. Then I tweaked some verbs. Then I tweaked some punctuation. Then I thought, “What the fuck am I doing?”

In the grand scheme of things, no one is going to care if one comma isn’t Oxford, or if I don’t use the right cadence for a Shakespeare joke. What they are going to care about is if the post goes up too late. We do have a time difference to deal with.

So there came a point when I was staring at what I’d written and I was staring at that publish button. And I was staring. I had two things going through my head.

The first was of those cartoons where the character wants to push the big red button and the characters around him are telling him, “DO NOT PUSH THE RED BUTTON.” And he’s really close to pushing that red button. And then he does push the red button, consequences be damned.

And then the little voice in my head told me, “They’re going to think you’re stupid. They’re going to think all of this is stupid and pointless. No one is going to give one eighth of a fuck about your stupid short film, especially given the work you’ve done on it. You have done nothing. Do not press that button, you’ll only be doing yourself a disservice.”

That little voice has ruined a lot of good things for me over the years. I’m sure the little voice in the back of your head has ruined a lot of things for you, too. It’s even worse when you have things like depression or anxiety to overcome. That makes it all the harder to shut down that voice.

But this time it wasn’t just me that would be at a detriment if I didn’t click that publish button. It would be my team and I couldn’t stand to let them down.

So I let it ride. I clicked that Publish button and the likes started pouring in like sunlight outta the heavens after a rainstorm. It was very validating. But I didn’t need the likes to feel like I’d done well. I didn’t need them at all. All I needed to do was let it ride and push that button. The voice in my head shut up as soon as that page refreshed.

From the moment I pressed that button, there was nothing I could do. What’s the worst that could happen? People wouldn’t like it? No one would respond? Someone would say it was stupid? Of all the possible things that could happen, none of those are The Worst. The Worst would be the police showing up at my door and taking me away for Crimes Against Word-manity.

But that is not a real thing. I think I’m safe.

So next time you’re stuck and wondering whether or not you should let it ride, the answer is yes, you should.

I know it will be hard. It might even feel impossible if you’re hesitant to relinquish control of something. But if you let something go, you never know what it might bring back to you. In this case it was the feeling that maybe, just maybe, I do know what I’m doing. Maybe, just maybe, everything is going to be ok.

So I see you standing there in the corner. You’ve got the dice in your hand. Get yelling and let it ride.