Maybe you\u2019ve never made a speech to a crowd of people you don\u2019t know. If you haven\u2019t, I\u2019m totally envious. You have taken the right path! You have probably added a year to your life expectancy. And most importantly, you have kept your self-respect.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m an hour or so away from giving a speech to an auditorium full of bibliophiles and library administrators. What I could possibly say to them regarding Libraries, I seriously have my doubts. The potential seems immense that I will leave here with an omelette on my face, a long bitter drive home with a vow to never again stand in front of a crowd hoping to provide \u2026 what? Inspiration? A peek into an aberrant mind? A tutorial on an Unintended, much less Unexamined, Life?<\/p>\n
I feel like Don Quixote on roller skates. Course I can\u2019t tell these literary folks I\u2019ve never read Cervantes\u2019 little book. I can\u2019t mention I have no idea why I was invited to be their keynote speaker at the end of their day. And I certainly can\u2019t admit that I don\u2019t know why I accepted their invitation.<\/p>\n
I guess occasionally I get up on my high pony and think I might actually have something to say. Hubris, we call it. I used to do this in Stanwoodopolis at the Kiwanis or the Rotary, go on the stump to pitch public art, cultural identity, community involvement. Ho ho. We ate breakfast, pledged allegiance to the flag, prayed, collected dues and then I would do my tap dance, invariably a yawn-inducing disaster. A slow learner, I apparently am. No news there. <\/p>\n
It takes a lot of something, courage maybe, to get up in front of people, especially strangers, to do your song. Or read your poetry. Or show your paintings. What you\u2019re doing is actually opening yourself up, revealing something about yourself, so if folks don\u2019t like your art, we artists feel like they don\u2019t like an important part of us personally. Probably why we cut off our ears occasionally like Van Gogh. <\/p>\n
I\u2019ve wanted to cut off an ear or two in my years as a struggling artist. Course, when you play a banjo, folks want to cut off their own ears. I don\u2019t have any ears to spare so I decided to keep at it. What I think is important to remember is you have to keep doing what you love. You may not get the loudest applause, you may not get rich doing it, you may go thru times when you question what you\u2019re doing. But if it means something to you, keep doing it. Success isn\u2019t so much about talent, it\u2019s about perseverance. <\/p>\n
I know a lot of folks who just can\u2019t take rejection. Nobody likes rejection, but I promise you, it\u2019s part of the deal. I used to paper my wall with rejection notices for stories and poetry I\u2019d sent in. I compete for glass projects all over the country and trust me, I lose most of them. But I didn\u2019t give up because I loved doing what I do and I always hoped I\u2019d figure out a way to do it. Not saying I didn\u2019t think about quitting a few times. Mostly I\u2019m glad I kept my ears. Another one of these speeches, all bets are off.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Maybe you\u2019ve never made a speech to a crowd of people you don\u2019t know. If you haven\u2019t, I\u2019m totally envious. You have taken the right path! You have probably added a year to your life expectancy. And most importantly, you have kept your self-respect. I\u2019m an hour or so away from giving a speech to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6],"tags":[1620,1621],"class_list":["post-11227","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rantings-and-ravings","tag-exposing-yourself","tag-speech-making-for-dummies"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11227","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11227"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11227\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11228,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11227\/revisions\/11228"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11227"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11227"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11227"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}