I drove halfway to my first Toastmaster’s meeting, turned around, and drove back home. I was too afraid. It didn’t matter how far I had to drive, the distance between fear and courage was the distance between my ears.
“Forgot to breathe” is a common observation from Toastmasters who are doing a post-mortem about going blank and/or panicking during their speech. The answer is an on-going cycle of rehearsals and drills and “again, from the top” that put you in the moment when you go blank/panic. Then you can start to add “breathing, on … Read more
Toastmasters observation: sometimes peeps overspend on “planning” and underspend on “doing.” There’s no substitute for falling down and getting back up. Tonight’s (Sept 9th) public speaking demo takeaway when addressing what to do when you “go blank” during a presentation – and you’re very scientifically minded: Develop a methodology, a framework, and test different techniques … Read more
Purchased a bottle of STAR brand Extra Virgin Olive Oil (EVOO) yesterday at Safeway. Brought it home, took a swig, and it tasted burnt as fuck. What the hell?!? This got me thinking: what should Extra Virgin Olive Oil taste like? I came across words describing what it should not taste like: musty, rancid. Yuck! … Read more
I posed the above question to my Facebook feed. Here are the answers.
Just got invited to speak for an hour. Paid. And I very much appreciate the invitation from a fellow Toastmaster who knows me pretty well. I also curse. During my Toastmasters 30-min speaking demos, 1-on-1 speaking and life coaching sessions, 2-hour bootcamp confidence workshops – I curse. It’s not gratuitous or derogatory or mean-spirited, but … Read more
Going from Ds and Fs to 3rd-in-my-class with an A meant switching from hardly studying in the American River College cafeteria to consistently finishing my homework every Tuesday and Thursday (the same days homework was assigned) at home. This “same day” cycle was crucial because I’m lazy AF and it’s easy for me to “put … Read more
Since there’s currently (as of July 2019) no Perspective / Distort / Warp tool in Affinity Designer ($49.99) (which I was totally used to for forever in Adobe Illustrator), ya gotta use Affinity Photo ($49.99). And you can open Affinity Photo directly from within Affinity Designer: File > Edit in Photo… Currently you can only … Read more
My friend Zoe Ventura was showing off her new roller skating jump, then fell on her ass shortly after landing. She got back up, dusted herself off, and skated around the Reno skate park and executed the exact same jump – this time balancing herself differently after her landing. And all’s well – minus a … Read more
iMovie 2019 Tutorial on Mac: Pro-Level Editing Using Precision Editor – Michael Kinney iMovie 2019 For Mac: Pro-Editing Tricks Using the Clip Trimmer – Michael Kinney