Speech! Speech!---If you speak it, they will fake it.

A few weeks ago I was asked, as the President of the Rotaract Club of St. Augustine, if I would give the keynote address at the Youth Leadership St. Johns graduation. While you may be thinking, "what an honor", really the circumstances are not that flatering. I do work at the Chamber which is the organization that houses the YLSJ program, and the Director of the program is also the VP of Rotaract...so it was really more of a convenience thing, I guess. Regardless, I thought my days of speaking to an audience of slightly-annoyed, cooler-than-thou teenagers were over--but I guess not.

Oh, and like the really mature 23 year-old I've grown to become, I stayed out until 3 a.m. the night before and decided to get the most drunk I've been since homecoming 2006. I really thought my days of waking up at 7 a.m. with the signature dry mouth and headache from hell that only too many glasses of wine can leave behind were over--but I guess not.

Yeah, I lead by example.

I was so nervous when I began that I stumbled through the first two lines of my speech, but eventually I caught my breath and made it through sentence after sentence of anecdotal crap. About four minutes into it I realized I was gripping the podium. I eased up on my death-hold and was relieved when I got through the (insert light laughter here) parts, and the audience did as they were supposed to. And I was even more relieved when they clapped at the (please god, insert appluase here) part at the end. Its not like they shook the room, but it lasted long enough for me to skip back to my seat. All in all, the speech went well, but I look forward to the day that I can truly be a great public speaker--the kind that doesn't get super-nervous or rely heavily on a script.

Funny enough my boss turns to me after the whole deal was over and asks me why I didn't do public speaking as a profession...I think it is her way of telling me I suck at my job and she wishes I would just quit and travel the world speaking at youth leadership graduations. ha. I'll take whatever compliment I can get from her---she's french, they are hard to come by.

I did get some pretty flowers out of the deal...and then they asked me to take photos at the event. So when I wasn't speaking I was crawling around on the floor trying to get a good angle, power suit and all.

Another day I can walk away saying I love my job/organization (er, whatever I represent these days) even more.