It’s been a hectic few days. Spoke at Gonzaga Thursday, home on Friday just too late to miss Obama’s speech, but just early enough to grab a couple hours of sleep before running a Friday seminar and meeting a friend after. Saturday was spent caucusing, followed by a local speaking gig (pretty clear now this isn’t where my passion is), and a last minute mad dash to Value Village to find a costume for the House on the Hill’s first ever Eighties Extravaganza (photos coming). Sunday was more sedate, sleeping in before setting up the “cardio theater” for some bike time while watching Hard Candy (disturbing), accidentally being a douchebag to a friend (reparable, maybe, hopefully), then going to a bartending flair competition (awesome).
Lessons learned:
From Gonzaga: The speech went well, especially considering that it was the largest audience I’d done exercises with and a new demographic (including one girl who fainted). I wasn’t left with the all-over glowing feeling afterwards that I was hoping for, however. I think the difference is in my audience – my usual audience has already made personal growth a huge priority in their lives, and the gratitude I feel from them reflects it. Reaching out to a more general audience, I’m going to get a much more sedate “well, this is interesting, and could maybe be useful” attitude. Craig told me he had the same experience when he was speaking professionally, and it made it really hard for him to market himself. I can see that. If I attack a wider audience, most of my audiences will be just fine even if they never hear me speak. On the bright side, I get results, as two girls in the first session met and decided to be roommates, while two girls in the second session became new instant best friends. That was nice.
From the caucus: What a clusterfuck of democracy. It was a cool experience, and I’m glad I went, but I can see the caucus being much more effective when there are only 1000 people in the entire state. There was far less arguing than I was hoping for (one 1-minute speech for Clinton and one 1-minute speech for Obama? what a ripoff!), nearly zero undecided voters, and I got the impression not many people were much more informed than me. And I’m fairly uninformed. But it was a great experience overall, with hundreds of people lined up around the block, and I’m the first alternate delegate behind my roommates for the next caucus level.
From the party: Be polite to police officers. Apparently our neighbor has very sensitive hearing, the officer who came to check out our “noisy party” said she had to park her car, roll down the window, and then listen for a few minutes to hear the music. She was very understanding, we hope our landlord will be as well, and a good time was had by all.
Bartending flair: So sweet. Craig and I met the competition winner from two years ago and after throwing limes at him while he was competing (he asked for it. no really, he did), hung out with him for the play-by-play for the final top competitors. Apparently some of the guys are required to compete in flair competitions by the terms of their visa – the US has plenty of bartenders, they have to prove that their job is special…
