Ignited

So, yeah, this happened: Tonight, I delivered 20 slides' and 5 minutes' worth of factoids about how to get better at roller skating, in front of a few friends, and hundreds of strangers.


(photo courtesy matrixleap)

I submitted my talk just after the last Ignite event, wrote down a couple points in an outline, and then promptly forgot about it for the 6-or-so months following, until they e-mailed me a couple of weeks ago saying, "hey, you've been accepted!" I've spent the past 3 weeks berating myself for accepting the spot--it was nerve-wracking preparing for it, designing the slides on the short timeline they gave was incredibly stressful, and as of this morning, I thought for certain I'd crash and burn horribly.

But, as it turns out, I did okay! A glass of wine loosened me up the right amount, I didn't hurt myself getting up or down from the stage on skates, and I managed to stay on-pace and even-keeled, and keep my tongue mostly-untied throughout the talk. I even got to get a little bit nerdy about center of gravity, using wheel edges, and muscles in the human body.

Don't get me wrong--holy crap, public speaking is terrifying, and I'm certainly not good at it, as a general rule. But hey, I pulled it off this time, and it was (gasp!) actually a pretty fun experience.

So, hooray for pushing boundaries, even if it took a fair bit of nudging from an outside force. ;)