I am going to start filtering some of my more private musings. Since blogger does not have a tool for that, you will need to visit my Live Journal and ask to be friended there. I will continue to post Daily Gratitude and other subjects here. There is also a FAQ for my Journal at the same link.
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| Wednesday, August 04, 2004 @ 19:46 I'm in a very odd space lately. Odd in a good way. Work is still very slow and I'm still having lots of body issues. However, my mind and spirit have been very active. I've been reading some books that are clicking together in my mind in ways I didn't expect. I'm relearning things through a new perspective and seeing some things I hadn't noticed previously. I'm excited and hope to address some of it in my Spirituality Journal -- if I can get the thoughts to sit still long enough to form sentences and paragraphs!! Next weekend I am leading the MAsT (Masters And slave Together) meeting. Back in Kansas, I was the "Faciliator" for the KINK group and even presented or moderated several of the programs. Since I moved to AZ, I've been nudged on several occasions to present a topic at APEX or the smaller Amazons meetings. I've always had a very good reason to decline: there was no topic that I felt qualified to discuss that someone else couldn't do better. Phoenix is a thriving community where experience is measured in decades, not months or years. I prefer to learn and grow as a member of the audience. I knew that would eventually change. There are topics that I don't see being addressed and ones where sharing my perspective might help enlighten others. There are even a few areas that could become personal campaignsm once boy and I have done some research and developed the thoughts into coherent presentations. This has been my long-term goal, I just didn't possess a timetable for any of it. Earlier this year, I began addressing things with boy -- outlining which topics would get our focus, discussing the right venue for each step, and starting to plan when these steps might occur. The result of my tentative planning is that the universe laughed and said, "no, you're going to do this one and do it NOW!" So I find myself preparing notes and some sort of outline for a topic that 2003 International Master Bert Cutler has hinted should be presented to the larger M/s community -- when I haven't even had the chance to present it to our little group yet! There's a part of me that thrives on standing in front of an "audience" -- whether it's a group of friends sitting in someone's living room or several hundred strangers in an auditorium. There's a bigger part of me that resists such experiences, hence the fact that I don't go around doing it very often. boy is the only one here who has any clue that I have, in fact, spoken in front of audiences of dozens and even hundreds of strangers at various times in my life. Four years of high school debate, forensics, and various other oratory contests can turn a shy, quiet bookworm into a competant public speaker. Just ask my high school debate coach. He admitted that my speaking skills were so bad in 8th grade "Speech & Drama" class that he couldn't believe I was as smart as my GPA and IQ indicated. By my Junior year (his last at my school) I was getting high ratings as an individual, even though I didn't have a regular partner and had to work with a different person for every meet. I continued to expand my speaking skills through college groups, work-related conferences, volunteer groups, new age seminars and, eventually, local bdsm events. Do I have things I want to say? Yes. Do I feel comfortable doing so? No. Not because I get stage fright or worry about not being able to speak in front of a group. My discomfort stems partly from considering myself a novice and not wanting people to take what I say as gospel when I'm still figuring it all out and may change my mind next month. While I may feel qualified to speak about certain things, I always know there is someone else with more experience, more knowledge, more insight. I just have to trust that the universe gave me these skills so that I could put them to use someday. And, apparently, one of those days is next Sunday. One thing I keep coming back to is something I used to reassure boy before his first solo presentation at APEX: If you speak your own truth to the best of your ability, the people who need to hear it, will. The words will come that need to be heard and the audience will assemble that will benefit most from those words. The proof is that, six months later, boy is still being approached by people who tell him how much he touched or helped them. Having public speaking skills doesn't mean I'll be a better presenter or more charismatic or compelling. It just means I won't have the performance anxiety that some experience and will be able to focus on trusting whatever messages the universe chooses to channel through me to those listening.
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