In exactly 1.5 hours, I am to give an 8 to 10 minute speech intended to 'Inspire My Audience.' It will be my 10th speech in the Communication and Leadership Program for Toastmasters and will earn me some designation thingy or the other. CTM maybe? All I can remember is that my club wants me to finish this blasted book so we earn some credit or the other. It's especially sad that I can't keep any of this straight since I am an officer in our club.
So far my speech consists of some gibberish about Bob the Builder, a list of four skills that are 'built' during the course of Toastmasters' experience, and a short note about how organizational skills can be developed through speech writing, evaluation writing and agenda setting. Somehow in the next 75 minutes, I will need to put this together in a moderately coherent 8 to 10 minute talk. I've become quite adept at throwing together a 5 to 7 minute speech at the last minute. In a little over an hour, we'll see if I can manage to pull together enough BS to get through an additional 3 minutes. Oh, and this is to be accomplished while I work on developing a report that is going out to our agents in the next day.
On the bright side, one of the objectives of this little talk is to not use notes. Won't be a problem at all, since they don't exist.
I sit here and wonder what happened to me. Procrastination and I are old buddies, so that is nothing new. However, the adrenaline rush that accompanies drawing breathtakingly close to the deadline no longer inspires me to great heights. I don't want to win the 'best speaker' trophy (I would have to remember to bring the dratted thing back to the next meeting anyway). I just want to slog through my speech and put it behind me. Just like the exam I recently took, I'm not aiming for great heights, just for good enough. Did I lose my drive and ambition after one (or more) too many sleepless nights? My ambition no longer drives my production. However, my ethics do, so I will continue to put together decent work. It would be nice to get my heart back into things, though.
I guess it's time to get back to work since my latest data pull has come back. Hellooooo 300,000+ rows of data to slog through.
M.W.
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2 comments:
I am just in awe of you being able to get up and do public speaking. For all my mouthiness, I freeze up when I have to get in front of a group.
It's kind of odd but I developed horrible stage fright when I got to be about 20. I think I may get dragged to a presentation on a new project in a few weeks and it will keep me up at night for days.
I can recommend Toastmasters for dealing with stage fright. Seriously, the first time I had to give a 45 second short talk on a random subject, I thought I was going to toss my cookies. Thanks to Toastmasters, I can get up and speak for 8 to 10 minutes and still keep my stomache's contents where they belong.
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