This month’s Carmel Chamber newsletter came out with a blurb that made me sound pretty good, so in keeping with my tradition of deflating a positive perception about myself before someone else can do it for me, I thought I’d share some of the noise that’s rattling around in my head about this whole chamber thing.

Lucky you.

First the blurb:

I liked the beginning of the last paragraph
(”when he’s not running all over town”) because it reminded me of a photo
from 1971 that the Herald had on it’s front page.

Now the noise:

As you know, I already mentioned a couple of posts ago about being this year’s Chair of the Chamber of Commerce. What I didn’t say then, because it was too early to know, is that I would have an initially weird reaction toward the position once I took over the role…sort of a “who the heck am I?” kind of reaction.

Having never been a supremely self-confident sort of fellow, in some of my initial “duties” I’ve felt like I was on the verge of embarrassing the organization through my goofiness. It didn’t help that my actual first experience representing the Chamber was on January 6th at the Church of the Wayfarer where I was asked to speak from the pulpit about the stresses of doing business in Carmel…AND, oh, talk a minute or two about U.S./China trade relations.

WHAT?! Gulp.

Oh, and did I mention that they asked me to sing a song, too? Lawdy.

It went fine and I hope I didn’t embarrass myself or the Chamber too much, but it’s made me realize that 2008 is likely to be a year filled with possible “make a public ass of myself” moments and that I should get used to it.

(I’m used to the “make a private ass of myself moments” already…Lawd knows I’ve been doing it for near-on 47 years.)

It’s been an odd adjustment to serve on Boards and/or committees and adhere to the specifics and protocol of “meetings” since I’ve never worked for anyone other than myself. When you work for yourself a meeting is pretty much “talking to yourself,” which I’m scarily good at, but meetings that require “Robert’s Rules of Order?”

Yikes.

Luckily, though, as I enter this temporary assignment, I’ve always had a “can’t we all just get along?” mentality, which jibes pretty well with the whole mission statement of a Chamber of Commerce, I think. And with a mind-set of cordial cooperation, I’m unlikely to beat anyone with the gavel so they probably won’t impeach me.

Unless I sing again.

Wish me luck (or rather, wish Carmel luck!)