7:14 AM and I'm already awake, which never happens. I lie there for a minute doing the math on how long I actually need before call time and then get up anyway, because lying there doing math is somehow worse than just getting up.

Nobody who's met me on set would believe this part. I talk too much, I laugh too loud, I have exactly zero chill about anything, ever, and none of that is an act. But this part, the two hours before, nobody sees. This part is just me, the coffee maker, and a playlist I will never admit the name of out loud.

The playlist is the same nine songs every time. I don't add to it, I don't take away from it. I've had this exact nine-song loop since my first shoot and I am too superstitious at this point to change a single one. My roommate thinks this is unhinged. My roommate has also never had to stand in front of a camera and actually be a person on command, so I don't take notes from her on this one.

“I've had this exact nine-song loop since my first shoot and I am too superstitious at this point to change a single one.”

There's a version of getting ready that's just logistics: pack the bag, charge the phone, remember the thing you forgot last time. And then there's the other version, the one that's actually just me negotiating with myself in the bathroom mirror for twenty minutes, doing a full pep talk out loud like a lunatic, telling myself the exact same three things I tell myself before every derby bout. Loosen the shoulders. Stop holding your breath between sentences. You have literally done this before and you were fine.

I used to think the nerves would go away eventually. They haven't. What's changed is I stopped treating that as a problem to fix. The nerves are just the toll booth. You pay it, you drive through, and on the other side is the part I actually love, the part where someone says "okay, whenever you're ready" and something in my chest just clicks over into a completely different gear.

“The nerves are just the toll booth. You pay it, you drive through.”

That click is the whole reason I keep doing this. Not the photos, really. The two seconds right before the photos, where I stop being nervous-in-my-kitchen Zira and turn into the version of myself that apparently reads fine on camera, according to everyone but me.

Today's shoot is a good one, I can already tell, the kind where the location alone is doing half the work before anyone's even picked up a camera. I'm not going to say more than that yet. Some of it will end up here eventually, the cleaned-up version, the one with actual lighting. But the real thing, the unedited stack of everything that happens today before anyone touches it, that's staying on Fanvue where it's supposed to live. If you want the version before the version, that's where it'll be.

Two hours and counting. Nine songs. One pep talk. Let's go.