Toastmasters

When I started this blog it was to be about gardening. But my life is not of one dimension and neither should my blog be one topic.

To start at the beginning, I have always been shy and introverted. When I was young I wouldn't say boo to anybody. The older I got, the more I saw I was denying myself a fundamental need for social interaction. Sure I work full time and have lots of friends at work. But I lacked the ability to feel comfortable with people I didn't know well outside the work situation. In my 40s I forced myself to get out and mingle. I'll never forget the time I was driving to Chicago to meet a group I had been talking with over the internet. I so dreaded meeting them I stopped outside Chicago and was sick in a fast food restroom for half an hour. But I digress - the other half of this shyness was a fear of public speaking.

I worked for one company for 21 years (it has since been sold and closed). My coworkers were like family. I wanted to say a few words about my boss at a company party. They gave me a microphone and I froze and mumbled something. Sigh. Then I attended a funeral of a friend's mother. Her daughter got up and gave a moving eulogy. I thought "I could never do that!"

It took a while before I was thinking "I could do that, and I'm going to do it." Luckily I haven 't had to deliver a eulogy for my mom and hopefully it'll be a long time before I do! But I CAN with the skills and confidence I have gotten with Toastmasters.

I joined a local group of Toastmasters who meet in the morning twice a month in downtown Lansing. What wonderful people! They are friendly and supportive and entertaining. When you join, you get a manual of ten different projects. You focus on something new for every speech, for instance one project focuses on gestures and another on varying the way you speak. Beside speaking, members get different "jobs" every meeting. One person counts the "um-ers," the filler words most speakers aren't aware they are using. Another finds a word not normally used and challenges speakers to use it while talking. A timer keeps tracks of all speeches and makes sure speakers stay within time limits. Someone has the invocation, someone the thought of the day, someone takes notes. For encouragement, ribbons are awarded for Best Speaker, Most Improved Speaker, Best Evaluator, and Best Table Topic Speaker, so someone tallies the votes. Of course the officers are the unsung heroes!

In a typical meeting, we start with three or four speakers, who are then evaluated by other members. Sounds scary but it isn't. Toastmasters are trained to be positive and encouraging, but to offer suggestions for improvement. After all that's why we're there!

After the prepared speeches, we move on to Table Topics. Now this is real scary for newbies but it is really a lot of fun. A Table Topic Master chooses a theme and makes up some topics which are sealed and participants have to speak for at least a minute but not more than 2 1/2 minutes . . . the rub is they can't open their topics until just before they speak. But if you can't think of what to say - say something! Even if you go off on a tangent that's OK - even if you lie or make something up that's OK too. The idea is to think fast and talk while keeping your brief speech organized with a beginning, middle, and summary.

Because of my brain surgery, posted yesterday, I took a year off from Toastmasters as trying to work was taking every ounce of energy I had. I returned in 2006 and told my mentor I wouldn't be able to speak, that the capability just didn't exist, and she gave me jobs (timer, grammarian, etc.) so I could be involved. When I felt able to string a few words together coherently, I told them, and have been speaking again since November. I'm still on that first manual and have room for lots of improvement. But it sure feels good to be able to talk to a group of people. Back to daylilies (I always talk about daylilies!), the President of my local club asked me to present last meeting and I said SURE! I won't say I wasn't nervous but I got through it! A few years ago I would have said "Me? No way!!!"