Ramdom Thoughts







   Several things have happened lately. None of them are enough to fill a whole column. I decided that I would share a few of them.
   A few weeks ago I was awarded by Advanced Communicator Bronze award from Toastmasters. To do this I needed to complete my Competent Toastmaster award (which I'd done already) and then complete two advanced manuals. Each manual has five speech projects in it. I went through several different manuals before deciding on Storytelling and Humorous speech. I'd been working on these for quite a while and decided that this was the year I needed to finish it. I was much closer than I thought. I finished my last two speeches and while I would like to have done them better, they were done.
   I hadn't realized how long I had been working on this until brought my projects to the VP of Education to sign. The first speech I did out of the Storytelling manual was 10 years ago. It took me a decade to finish ten speeches. I'm going to work on the next step which is the Silver Award. I've already picked out my projects. One is Interpretive Reading and the other is on moderating discussions. In addition I have to do one project out of The Better Speaker Series. This time it is not going to take me ten years.
  Speaking of speeches, my talk at church went well. I was a little worried. I was told to plan for 15 minutes. C would also be speaking and since his topic was going to more broad than mine I decided to time my talk to 11 minutes to give him extra time. I worked on my talk and timed it. It came out at eight minutes. I added a bit more to it and retimed it. I was up to a whopping eight and a half minutes. I worked on that talk over and over again. No matter how much I added to it, the talk kept timing out at no longer than nine minutes.
  I was worried. I tend to be a little compulsive about things and I didn't like that I was so far under time. Being under time is almost as bad as being over time. I fussed about it mentally for a few minutes and then decided I had to stop worrying. Everything was going to be just fine. One of two things was going to happen. Either someone would go over time or I would be inspired to talk longer. It turned out that someone spoke for longer than expected. My talk was just the right length.
   A few weeks ago I found some lace material that can be used to knit a frilly scarf. I wasn't sure how many skeins it would take to knit the scarf, so I bought three. It turns out that each skein makes one scarf. I only wanted one scarf so I had to figure out what to do with the other two. Carrie saw my half knitted scarf and admired it. I asked her if she wanted it and she said yes. I told my friend Kori about what I had bought. She said she'd take one too. Problem solved. I discovered something as I knit these scarves. I like making things for other people. I like to think of the person I'm giving the scarf to. How will they wear it? Will they get compliments? Will they think of me when they see the scarf? It make makes my knitting time more fun.
   Last Sunday I taught the Relief Society lesson. We had a good discussion and I was pleased. Bishop Nealy came in towards the end and I asked if he wanted to say anything. He made a few comments. I had an ending I planned to use, but a different one came into my head. It wrapped up the lesson nicely.
  The woman in charge of scheduling the lessons came to tell me that my lesson was good. I thanked her and I told her that I liked getting to teach a bit more often. She looked startled. It occurred to me that I might have made a bit of a faux pas. For some reason that I don't quite understand it seems like if you say that you like teaching or giving a talk or reading the Scriptures you'll get funny looks. Why shouldn't teaching be fun? Why can't you say that you don't dread giving talks? What's wrong with enjoying Bible reading?
   I think it might have something to do with being in the Midwest. We take everything seriously. If you enjoy doing "church things", then clearly you are not taking it seriously.
   I'm going to end this column now. I have laundry to fold, instruments to practice and scarves to knit....
 

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