Day 31: Slaying Dragons

Day 1:

Day 31:

I don't look any different. But I feel different. I suppose that is what counts. I didn't want to blog tonight. Today was too difficult for me, on too many levels. And I didn't feel like I could talk about it honestly on my blog, so I avoided it for an hour and then decided to bite the bullet and write. So I'll be honest, and vulnerable, like I do, because that's who I am. Here goes: today was very hard for me. On many levels personally. Events unfolded for me that were difficult.

Today was about me, slaying my dragons. Yesterday I got a call from my director....asking me "what are you doing tomorrow?". I said "wow, that feels like such a loaded question". He said "well, I just want to send you to a class tomorrow, called Basic Presentation Skills. They have a cancellation and you have a presentation ready already so I'm volunteering you". I of course agreed. The person running the class called me shortly thereafter. He said " we will be asking you to do a 5 minute presentation and we will be filming you and playing it back". First of all, I'm not the best public speaker. Second of all, I have this hugely distorted self image and am not comfortable being video taped. So after hyper ventilating for a few minutes, and almost falling out of my chair I agreed. Giving a presentation is hard. But I've survived doing that before, so I was OK with that. What I wasn't OK with, was watching the playback. I knew it would be hard for me. So after sitting there all morning stressing over doing it, then stressing over the playback, I was wiped out. But I went in there with this thought: "I need to grow. I need this. I will breathe, and take it easy and this will be good for me". And it was. Very good for me. After the terrifying reality of seeing yourself on film, and getting over the shock, I was very objective. I told the class: Well, I'm saying Um too much and shifting my weight a bit, and looking at my slides too much, but hey, I'm actually more comfortable looking than I thought and I used some humor and my hand gestures punctuate the slides, I have stuff to work on, but I'm not bad". It was a very good learning tool after all. Seeing yourself on video. Because I have a tendancy to kind of block out what I just did. So it was good.

I went in to the 530 class today. It was young Mark, so I knew I'd be able to just flow through it. He was great, delivering a nice solid flowing class, just like I needed.

So once again, my body was very strong. It seems to me like my body is telling me "I'm good, don't worry about me at all, this challenge is not about the physical part". I am amazed at how strong I have become and do really feel like events in my life are now pointing me in the direction of working on the inner layers. Peeling back insecurity and fear and finding out who Michelle is at the core.