Not Dead, just working

Dear Tara, David, Rachel, Todd, Tom, and maybe few others who do not comment,

I have been incredibly busy at work and also traveling (whoo hooo!) I was in Milano or Mailand as we like to call it in Tedesco. I had quite possibly the most terrifying week ever last week for me given my new phobias of speaking on conference calls and making speeches. The good news is, I did really well on both of them! The bad news is, it wasn't perfect and I may have had something hanging out of my nose during the face to face one. On Monday I presented our competitive position to a conference call of 47 participants, seven of whom may have been listening. I only fudged one part where I got to a slide in my powerpoint and honestly had no idea what it was trying to say so I started to read the bullet points which also made no sense. Then, I said something non-sensical like, "and that is why we want to have to going forward. And on slide 14...." oh well. There's thinking on your feet for you. Still, no shakey mouse voice and no pounding heart.

I actually found a new technique after all of my research on the internet on how to improve or get over this new fear. I found some strange tapping therapy- kind of like accupuncture, but with no needles, instead you just tap. While you tap you say some sentence over and over. "Even though I used to feel_______________ I know now that I am __________________." First you tap the meaty bottom part of your hand (with your pointer and middle fingers) the place where you would use to karate chop a pile of wood to break it in half. Then the exact top of your head, right above your eyebrows, under your eyes, under your nose, under your bottom lip, right under your collar bone and then about four inches under your pits. Try it. I can't guarantee that it works, but it definitely helped me. Phobias are irrational, People. So it kind of makes sense that some crazy tapping might make them go away. If there's no sense in the problem, why have a solution that makes sense?

Thursday I was in Milan and stood up in front of 26 Consulting Partners in our Banking practice and presented on materials that I wrote and prepared. My voice sucked balls for the first 10 minutes and I think that disgusting suction sound of my dry mouth opening and closing was echoing off of the marble floors. pllsgghhhrrr pllffffccgggghhh, but after a few minutes it kind of cleared up and I think I ruled that presentation. Towards the end I started to feel repore with the group, noticed they were sort of drifting and yelled, "are you even listening to me" to which one guy said it was really noisy by them as a joke and so I repeated myself in a shouting voice to which everyone laughed and may even have remembered what I said.



On the downside, it is possible that I delivered my speech with a small piece of snot in my left nostril sort of attaching itself to the inner wall of my nose. At the least, I think it was there during lunch. I found it shortly after lunch while applying more lipstick. So, good speech. May have had something hanging out of my nose for part or all of it (50 minutes , FYI) You know, you can't win them all. All I asked for was to be able to present effectively. I guess I forgot to cover all the bases. Is there a tapping technique for clean noses?