The presentation is done. Done. Given. Delivered. All five minutes of it, five minutes that rolled around for five hours in a stressed mind, on a tense tongue. I did a good job. I’d know I had even if I didn’t get feedback from a few friends, sweet words that confirmed my feeling of being relatively poised and bright, with the exception of those multiple references to jazz hands which may have been extraneous to the overall topic. Everyone likes a good jazz hands moment.

What’s amazing about moving through each and every experience like this one, one in which I have to be in front of people, sunny and informed and personable, is that I feel like a fucking rock star when I’m done. I’m bordering on enjoying the process while I’m up there, but when I’m finished, I experience a little bit of a rush that I don’t get from anything else in life. I feel accomplished, like I’ve conquered some emotional obstacle, the interpersonal Everest. It’s intoxicating.

That feeling makes me want to try it more. I’ve always thought I’d be good at training, bad at karaoke, awful at improv. I’ve thought for some time about putting up short videos on this site, maybe a podcast? And then I remember that I hardly post regularly and want to write essays in my spare time, the spare time I don’t seem to have much of even though I have no children, work only one job, don’t floss as much as I should, and don’t sleep through the night. Maybe next year.