…ego under glass

A couple of months ago, Homescapes was contacted by the Pacific Market Center in Seattle to see if Beau or I would be willing to come up and give a talk during their market week. Since Beau got the call, he volunteered me .

It seemed like fun when I was talking to the organizer on the phone, but after hanging up I immediately began to wonder if history might repeat itself…I was asked a few years ago to do a speaking engagement for a conference sponsored by Furniture Today and I realized after saying yes that I was scared, nervous and sick to my stomach with stage fright.

Luckily that one fell through so I had some time to regroup and figure out how to overcome the shyness.

That’s where all the singing and community stuff I’ve been writing about over the years in this blog comes into play. I’ve been using those experiences in lieu of Toastmasters to get used to talking in front of people. (The “in front of people” is the key, here…clearly I don’t actually have a problem with talking .)

I got to do a trial run with a speaking engagement at a local Rotary Club about the marathons-on-every-continent thing I’ve been doing and realized that I didn’t have a problem talking in front of people anymore. Maybe a problem being coherent , but that’s a different issue.

So I actually began to look forward to the Seattle gig.

I’m not sure if the people in the room for the lecture I gave on Thursday were glad I got over the fear or not, but I am. I actually had fun and talked too long by about 20 minutes (which won’t surprise most of you, but I was worried before I came up here that I’d only have about 5 minutes worth of anything to say.)

Let’s just hope I had at least 5 minutes worth of anything to hear.

I will say it was an odd experience, especially seeing the poster of my big mug grinning from the wall. It was a good thing I didn’t know about that or I might have been nervous. As it was, I just took a few deep breaths, reminded myself that I always get nervous butterflies before I start running a marathon and that they always go away when the gun goes off, and then I filled the seminar room with my pearls of wisdom (or, more likely, hot air).

And luckily, in this case, no guns went off.

Of course, I don’t remember hardly anything I said, but they filmed it, so I’ll eventually see it (probably peeking through my fingers with my hands over my face).

And now I’m off to New York for the Gift Show then on to Charleston, South Carolina for the ARTS conference. August has been about the busiest month I’ve slogged through in the 12 years I’ve been slogging in retail. But it’s a good busy (at least so far).

So adios ’til next time.