I’m really touched, thanks. I’m doing OK. Here are some highlights from my rambly life.
For the last few weeks I’ve been immersed in two speeches that I’ve been hired to present early next month. I’ve had a lot of trouble with them because, though I love the topic and the research is a fun to do, anytime I work on them I start to think about the speeches themselves and my mind clamps shut. Given my social anxiety it should be no surprise that I’m pretty nervous about them. I understand that lots of people have trouble with public speaking so I have no way to compare my reaction to others’ but I haven’t been sleeping, I’m drinking even more than usual which was already more than is healthy, my other work has been neglected, I’ve been prone to overreact often with rage– basically I’m a nervous, twitchy wreck.
I have a good friend who’s enthusiastic about everything that I do. I have few friends but she has lots and most of them seem to like me. I asked her if she could gather some of them for a rehearsal of my speech. She did and Sat. night I got to give it a dry run. Things went pretty well although I have some clear holes that need patching. They kept telling me that I’m charmingly disorganized. The interpretation is obvious.
Otherwise life is churning along. One advantage to having a major roadblock in one’s future thinking is there isn’t room for a good, all encompassing depressive episode. Things haven’t gotten really dark since I misinterpreted my St. John’s Wort dosage earlier this summer. That might be the herb or it might be the speech. If the dark engulfs me later next month I suppose I’ll have the answer to that one.
Finally Hide & Seek
is being released on Wednesday. I really enjoyed this book. Look for my review here tomorrow or Wednesday. It’s made me think again about aromatherapy. New-agey flotsam and jetsam aside this might be a helpful thing for me. I think I’ll look into it sometime after the speeches.
1 comment:
It's lunchtime, and I checked back on the off chance that you had posted again--a nice surprise. The dry run was an excellent, and obviously helpful, idea. Speaking in front of people you know is much harder than in front of strangers.
Are people coming to hear YOU, or to hear about the topics? If the latter, keep that in mind, hide behind the subjects--the audience isn't there for you the person, but for you as a conduit for information. And chances are you will know more (a lot more) than your audience about the subjects, so give yourself a break on that front. Believe me, if there is a show-off in the audience, people will turn on the show-off in support of you.
Best of luck--you'll be terrific.
K
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