On the other side

Months ago, I was asked to speak at an event. Against my instinct of declining the invite outright, I had accepted it. It seemed like a good idea in terms of personal and professional development.

For weeks I procrastinated over preparing the presentation. Now I totally know what it's like for our speakers who tend to finish theirs the night before their talk. I eventually wrote down word for word what I wanted to say. When I got to preparing the slides, I had run out of motivation, so they ended up rather sparse. The night before, I was so nervous and just couldn't go to sleep. And I got so annoyed with myself. Fair enough, it's normal to be nervous, but that was just pathetic!

I considered re-reading my script but despite freaking out a little, my laziness still won that battle. I just couldn't be asked to go over stuff again. I do sometimes question  my intelligence... Cause surely, it would have calmed me down to read what I had written in order to feel better prepared.

Anyhow, after a terrible night (the later it got, I also go hungry, which didn't help with falling asleep ...), it was time to get to the venue in a taxi. Reassuringly, the lady who was speaking in my session didn't show up. Instead, I got to meet the guy who was chairing and who had already seen my (terrible) slides. I kind of rehearsed my slides in the taxi and just confused the poor guy (great initial feedback...).

Because of traffic, the start of the session was delayed... Fortunately, as soon as I got to the venue, I calmed down. Had a nice chat with the AV guy, who also mic-ed me up. I made a mental note to wear something with pockets next time. Once I stood at the lectern, I seemed to be on auto-pilot. I made an effort to look around the audience, and it was good to see people nodding - and weird to see that people took pictures of my slides (and trust me: I am not exaggerating: they were really basic - without my presentation I doubt that they make any sense at all!). Once talking, I couldn't stop and went quite a bit over the allocated 15 minutes.

I felt so relieved when it was done - and got applause, too. And I got good feedback. One lady asked how often I do this, as I seemed to confident. I'm really pleased that my nerves didn't show. In my usual manner, I also immediately discarded all the nice comments - cause surely people are just being nice, aren't they? But I am working on that. And I am proud of myself.