Nobody Expects the Spanish Inquisition

Amongst our weaponry are such diverse elements as: fear, surprise, ruthless efficiency...

Fear: My own. Surprise: Other people's. Ruthless efficiency: Getting in under time (hey, as far as I know).

My talk went well! I don't know if I went under time, but I have a pretty good sense for that and I think I was OK. It turns out the biggest reason they wanted us to keep the length under control is so we could get through all the speakers in one night without staying up till midnight. We did go one hour over, but that seemed OK. And I don't think it was my talk that did it. Unless you count the half-hour they spent lavishing praise on me ;-).

OK, probably not that much. But they did seem pretty enthusiastic. We were supposed to start the critiquing bit with Stuff We Liked, followed by Stuff We Would Have Liked to See More Of. But nobody seemed to have anything to put in that second bucket after my talk, even my pastor. Neato torpedo. The closest they came was telling me about stuff they almost had a problem with, but then I answered it later in the talk, so it was all good. Oh, and one guy said he was so busy being entertained that he forgot to listen for ways he could apply the talk to himself. But then he said that wasn't a bad thing, either, and the pastor agreed.

One guy in particular seemed surprised by me. I'm not sure what it was, but this has happened to me before, even as a trombone player. (I remember a guitar player, who had already heard me play in ensembles, was surprised when I pulled off a solo. And I think some folks were cheerfully taken aback when I, a girl, even knew which end of the horn to put up to my face.) I don't know if I still manage to come off as shy and demure in social situations (which, OK, I can be), or if people assume that I'm probably not going to be great at things, or what. Or -- here's the pipe-dream hope -- maybe I'm just so awesome that there's no way anyone could have seen it coming. Let's go with that. Anyway, the sheer shock of me in performance situations seems to really work in my favor, which is OK with me.

As for the praise -- and absence of real criticism -- my pessimistic and fearful brain naturally looked for the faults, or the chinks in others' compliments. But the fact is, I was the only one they didn't have criticism for, and it's not because they thought I was too fragile to take it, because they were happy to throw jokes my way (always a compliment in my book), and there was another girl, far quieter than I, to whom they did give constructive criticism. Their lists of compliments for me were long and effusive, something they weren't so much for each other. And their observations were consistent with what I've heard from other people, and also feel to be true myelf: I have lot of energy when I speak. Also, I've spent so much time analyzing my own thoughts that I'm effective in expressing them, and letting people into my thought process seems to impact them in positive ways (good to hear, because my process can be pretty brutal to my own heart).

It's kind of a big deal for me to dispense with the false humility and come right out and say that I think I'm good at this sort of thing. I do hope I get more opportunities to do it. It's scary, opening my brain for others to see. It's scary even when I do it in my blog. But I've been stockpiling musings for 34 years now, and they've got to go somewhere.