As soon as I moved back to Pittsburgh in February, we got an enormous amount of snow that ground the city to a halt, and I was stuck at home for a few weeks. This was OK, cause I had a lot of painting and unpacking and rearranging to do. That was all done within a month, around the time the snow started to melt. Then I went to Colorado for a week to attend the (very awesome) Integral Incubator at Boulder Integral. I came back with my sails full of wind, ready to start my new blog and activist project, Bright Green Burgh, dedicated to creating a future for Pittsburgh that is both bright and green.

My first BGB act was to speak at a really fun event last weekend, put on by dear friend/professional bellydancer/community-builder extraordinaire Amethyst Azhar, where local artists created bellydance costumes out of recycled stuff. I was excited to talk to a bunch of environmentalist-leaning folks in such a merry atmosphere, hoping to connect with some and start to build a team. And I worked hard on what I would say—practiced it and clocked it and edited it and practiced some more.

By the time I got to the event, I felt ready. But I was in the middle of a conversation with a fellow speaker when heard my name being called, and I hurried to the mike. And then, as my demure friend Matt likes to say, I shit the bed.

Instead of my beautifully crafted 9 minute speech, I rambled semi-coherently for about 3 minutes, leaving out the meat of what I had meant to say. I felt like I couldn’t catch my breath, and I could tell I wasn’t connecting with the audience; I wasn’t even getting my message out. In the heat of the moment, I elected to just get the hell off stage.

Funny thing, though—somehow, I didn’t feel awful or hang my head in defeat as I would’ve expected myself to do. Nope, I was able to see clearly where I’d gone wrong and use that information to prepare myself better for the next time. Here’s some of the stuff I figured out.

• I can’t read from a page—too many variables have to be in place for that to work (lighting, a place to lay pages down, etc.). I need to be able to speak just from a list of key points to address.
• Before I get up there, I need to take a few minutes to breathe and focus on what I want to convey, and I have to pay close attention to what’s going on in the program. I cannot be surprised to hear my name being called!
• Saying what I mean to say is far more important than how I wordsmith my message.
• People in an audience want to connect with me when I’m speaking. They want to be illuminated and inspired and educated. They are probably not looking for stuff to judge.

Of course I knew all this before Saturday night, but I didn’t act on it—apparently I needed to be reminded, and I guess that’s worth an uncomfortable couple of minutes.

To be honest, I was surprised that I wasn’t more decimated by the gap between what I wanted to happen, and what actually happened. I guess all this talk of having a developmental point of view has actually seeped into my skull at long last. I know that this suckage will bear fruit the next time I speak—hopefully I will suck a little less!