This song is a metacommentary on my life over the last 4~ or so years. Performance Anxiety is an instrumental I have been working on since 2019, with guitar and bass recordings from 2021, and combined with lyrics I wrote and performed in 2024. In the future I hope to be less ensnared within my actual performance anxiety, and I’m trying to be okay with posting music with less formal preparation beforehand. Build in public, as they say. In 2018-19, I was about to release my debut album and take on the world with a tour in the Denver area. Then, as the release got closer and closer, and the pandemic worsened, two dams broke at once. At the same time as the pandemic made it practically impossible to make a career as a real life events performer, so too did my mental health fall apart as I lost my job. I was so socially anxious that I could not even use social media at one point - the act itself felt like a performance, for an infinite mocking audience whose standards I could not meet. Really, I was placing unhealthy and unrealistic standards upon myself, as an independent artist, - trying to compete with bigger brand names, and book DJing gigs at festivals and travel for shows. I was just trading mental health for a chance at what I really wanted - an independent career. I hope this artwork makes you feel something real.