I Am Grateful

Today I stayed home. I worked at writing the speech I am to present tomorrow evening at my Toastmasters meeting, I blogged, I worked on the speech, I cleaned & organized, I worked on the speech, I cleaned, I had a snack, I blogged, I worked on the speech. And finally the speech got done. It is to be an 8-10 minute speech, from the manual Specialty Speeches, project #3 Uplifting the Spirit. We of course get to choose which manuals to work out of, and which projects to do when, what to speak about, and still I often have a challenge around making the decisions involved and then coming up with the speech. Though, I've had times when it's hit me at 2am and I've had to get out of bed and write the rest of the night. This speech I've titled "You Have 2 Choices".

Once the speech was written, Iwanted to print it out so I could practice it, and so I could time myself to be sure it fit the time alloted for this project. This meant I had to install the drivers and such for my new printer, so that I could do the printing. I ran into a problem with that, so had to reboot the computer and try again. Better that time, still not right though, so had to re-install the program. Ahhhhh, now I could print the speech.

Reading it out loud, I timed myself by using an online stop watch. I am way over time!! I quit when the stop watch was over 10 minutes and I was not near done. Now I have to figure out what to cut from the speech to make it fit. When presenting a speech, you often do it slower than when you practice... because you have to pause while people laugh or gasp, or.... I usually make my speech about the 'middle number', so in this case, it's an 8-10 minute speech, so I want to practice it at maximum 9 minutes long. Also, I watch the lights as I am timed giving the speech. For this speech the green light will come on at 8 minutes, the yellow at 9, and the red at 10 minutes. When it hits yellow, I have to make a decision. Am I close enough to the end to finish it? or will I have to cut some and jump to the closing lines?

I have a lot of work to do on this speech yet before I present it tomorrow evening, and I know I can do it. The worst is over.

I am grateful that my speech is written.
I am grateful that I feel it is a good speech.
I am grateful knowing that somehow I will decide what I can leave out in order to make the time fit.
I am grateful I was able to install my new printer.
I am grateful I HAVE a new printer.
I am grateful to be part of Toastmasters.
I am grateful for my spiritual, personal, mental, emotional growth.
I am grateful I did some cleaning and organizing in my home today (to me, part of the growth).

I am grateful for all of you that come to visit me.