It’s Only Tuesday

I’m not one to wish the days away, but going back to a full work week after two nice, long holiday weekends is rough.

Last night I gave my 6th Toastmaster speech. I might be starting to get the hang of it. I spent a ton of time preparing a PowerPoint presentation to accompany my speech, which was on the art of Zentangle. One of the slides was a mini slideshow of some of my favorite pieces. Other slides showed the various steps of creating a Zentangle. It was gold.

I arrived early and took pains to rearrange the room so we’d be facing a blank wall where I could project. We got the projector out of the closet and set everything up. The projector had one of those old connectors with the weird trapezoid shaped plug with all the little prongs in it. My computer doesn’t have a port for that kind of plug.

My heart fluttered for a moment. But wait! There was a USB cord in the case with the projector!

The projector was on, shining it’s bright blue glow on the wall. My computer was on, with the PowerPoint open and ready to perform.

But no.

The cord did not seem to comprehend that I wanted it to transmit the presentation to the projector. Various meeting attendees offered suggestions. Try Windows P! Function 8! Hail Mary!

No.

There would be no presentation to go with my speech.

If I wasn’t still chilled from the 9 degrees outside and if I had functional sweat glands, I would have been sweating like a sinner in church.

Instead, I contemplated my choices. One, I could gather my things and leave at my earliest convenience. Or two, I could work with what I had.

Fortunately, I had considered the possibility of technical difficulties while I was preparing my speech, so I brought the book I had planned to mention, plus my Zentangle travel kit and a bunch of tiles.

Because I’d been rehearsing my speech so much, and also because Zentangle is near and dear to my heart, talking about it was easy. I was still pretty nervous with having to think on the fly and I really had no idea how I was doing on time, since I’d timed my speech to go along with the slides. But it all worked out okay. I used the book as a prop and I used the items from my kit as props, and of course, the main attraction, the Zentangle tiles.

During the break, I spread the stuff out on a table and a handful of people came up and looked at them and talked to me about it. So that was cool, and by then I was so glad to have gotten the speech over with that I didn’t care about the technical issues. Ok, I cared a little. I spent a LOT of time putting that presentation together and no one got to see it.

All in all, I’m happy I completed the 6th speech and I realize the fact that I got thrown a curve ball only served to educate me further in the importance of being prepared for anything. Only four more speeches to go and I will get my Competent Communicator Certification! Woo hoo!

I’ll close with my brilliant closing line from my speech last night:

I hope this brief overview has inspired you to try your hand at the art of Zentangle!

Embrace the corny. 🙂