Wednesday

Mandi is doing a week-long series, What I Did All Day. I thought it was really interesting and a great idea so I thought I'd do it as well.

3:39am Wake up. For whatever reason, I am having the hardest time fully recovering from jet lag. I keep waking up really early. Lie in bed until I fall back asleep.

4:50am Wake up and this time get out of bed. Head to the shower.

5:30am Finish up addressing the last few remaining Christmas cards. Finish getting ready. I am doing a presentation today to my department about what I do so I practice one more time in the mirror.

6:05am Leave for work.

6:17am Stop at Starbucks. Lately I'm all about the cinnamon dolce latte and the non-fat, sugar-free version is only 2.5 weight watcher points!

6:30am Turn on my computer and wait for it to boot up. Run through my presentation. I've noticed that when I do the presentation without my notes I do okay but with my notes I can't trust myself and I keep referring to them. Hopefully this will all be sorted out before its time for me to do it for real. My computer is now booted up so I scan through my new emails before practicing again.

8:30am Go to the back room to run through the presentation with Jake. This time I practice standing up and realize that I keep shifting on my feet. Hm, need to work on that.

9:00am Back at my desk, I tweak my notes just a bit. Try to get other work done. That doesn't work out too well. Read through my notes again.

10:10am Find an unoccupied office and do a run through with several of my fellow presenters.

11:00am Walk down to the Terrace building to help with the set-up.

11:45am Start the ice breaker. Okay, we're only about 5 minutes late at this point. Not too bad. No one could hear me though when I tried to announce the ice breaker. Hopefully part of that was because they were all still talking and getting their lunch. Will really need to speak LOUD when it's my turn.

12:15pm Walk up to the front of the room that has suddenly gotten a lot bigger and there seems to be a LOT of people. Were there this many people just a minute ago? Here goes nothing…

12:28pm Sit down after my presentation. Wait for nerves to settle down. Listen to the remainder of the presenters. Yes, all of this was for less than 15 minutes. So why was it such a big deal to me? I have never been very good at public speaking and frankly it terrifies me. This was to a large audience and I was representing my group and so I felt a lot of pressure to do well. Plus, I realized later, I had the added pressure of the set-up and the ice breaker and I wanted to make sure the ice breaker went well. Overall, I think the presentation went okay. I thought my part could have been a lot better, but it could have been worse so I'm trying to be happy with how it went. I'm just grateful it is over!

2:00pm Head to Red Robin for a late lunch. I couldn't eat beforehand - my stomach was all in knots.

2:48pm Back at my desk. Start preparing for a meeting tomorrow morning. Work, work, work.

4:42pm Leave work and head down to the bar to meet up with several of the other presenters. I pretty much knew this day would be a waste in the end. Way too much nervous energy in the morning to do anything other than practice. And afterwards, needed to decompress just a bit, and didn't really want to start anything new as everything on my plate at the moment is somewhat involved. Plus I just feel drained.

6:13pm Leave the bar. Contemplate going to the gym but decide against it. Head to Target to pick up bubble wrap and a couple more boxes.

6:56pm Arrive home. Start wrapping and assembling the boxes that need to go out in the mail.

8:57pm Crash. I cannot keep my eyes open at this point. The other side of waking up early, is the fact that I'm usually in bed by 8. This week has been the exception as it has been closer to 9. Hopefully I'll be able to at least start sleeping later in the morning.