I am never quite sure what to say when someone remarks that I keep winning. My instinct is to be either defensive or deferential. Perhaps this says things about me.
Anyway, I keep winning.
The haul of certificates increased this week. I won my competition, so I am now the best critic of other people’s speeches in Greater Manchester. On the 5th I’ll be competing in Sheffield against the 3 best speakers in the entirety of the North of England. By the way, I’ve just checked out the names of all the clubs in this competition, and they’re almost all completely neutral except York, who decided on ‘York EbOrators’.
This is a strange thing, of course, because it’s so wonderfully niche. There really aren’t that many people in the speaking club in the UK, and of that number not all will want to compete – certainly not in the specialism I’m competing in, which is improvised and off-the-cuff critique.
On the other hand, I’ve won my club and area level convincingly. I can win the next one, I think, though the level after that is the whole of the UK and Ireland. Perhaps that’s a little much, at least for my first try round.
Anyway. There’s not too much relying on me, at this point, and even if there were I’d still shrug it off. I’m looking forward to doing my best, in any case, and competing in a room that fits about 80 people. 80 is on the smaller side of crowds I’ve performed for, so I’m currently not too worried.
Tickets are available, if you’d like to come to Sheffield and see some amazing speakers. Or wait until next year, when I’ll be giving a tall tale or a humorous speech or, possibly, both.
This week has been really intense. I’ve been across about 8 different things, and all but one of them I finished by the end of the week.
I’m still thinking about last week. The date we need to bring our organisations is getting closer, and the interface between the two is fizzing frantically as we try to bring everything into line. A lot of things are going to happen very suddenly, and I find myself in a lot of places, trying my best to figure out which doors are two-way and which doors will lock behind us.
I fixed a small but important thing, and wrote some code to try to do some parsing. That was a nice touch of reality: writing code, writing tests, watching the tests pass, releasing the code, the code not working. The perfect cycle of engineering.
I keep writing. I’ve written four or five different things this week, and not all of them needed me to write them, and trying to have a singular voice for 25 people is a non-starter. And yet if someone asks if I’d like to write/edit/tidy up something folks have written my head nods like it’s on a string. I can’t help it. I’m also exceptionally good at it. I’ve punched up a couple of things this week and the outcomes will be good. I think.
Someone I love has been especially awesome this week, and I remain gently but wonderfully mystified that such brilliant people are in my orbit.
Caffeinated Punctuation 