I’ve been multipled by 1, lads. A process has happened but I’m still the same, though in all honesty it’s hard to tell. This week: misremembered philsophical conundra, a review of my performances, and an attempt to remember everything I’m doing at the moment.

I’m doing too much at the moment.

I have now won 12 awards at Toastmasters, not counting the competitions I’ve competed at. My first proper speech was on the 9th of January, which means I’m averaging about two awards a month.

I’ve given 6 formal speeches, and won ‘best speech’ 5 times. I’ve been an evaluator 5 times, and won the award for evaluating 4 times. I’ve done an improvised speech at almost all the meetings I’ve attended but only won that 3 times, so clearly there’s some work to do there.

I don’t know what a good rate looks like, and I don’t really mind. It’s my favourite thing to do at the moment. I get to slow down and think about topics – things I can bring my own lens to. Then I write a first draft. It’s mostly bad, usually, and I get to throw it to my friends in a writing group who give it a thorough review. We figure out the bits that don’t work, the bits that do, the bits that will work if we invert the delivery. I polish it, rehearse it, deliver it.

People at the club are freaked out by the level of preparation I put into my speeches. I approach my speeches like a keynote. They’re only seven minutes long, and most people can speak for more than seven minutes – at least once they’re over their stage fright. Meanwhile I’m rehearsing like it’s opening night and I’m playing Hamlet. I’m doing blocking. I’m running lines backwards. I’m doing laps of my memory palace. I am in the zone.

All of this is to say – I take this quite seriously, and it is the thing of least import in my whole world. Nothing hinges on whether I deliver my silly little speech well, or not well. It is just fun, and I am still incapable of doing it in a way that any other human being would recognise as fun.

There are some changes happening at work. I don’t know what the impact of these changes is going to be. I honestly don’t. I also think it’s going to end up with some messy communication lines, and unclear accountabilities and responsibilities, and no don’t worry I’m not going to start that again. I’m doing my best to keep things afloat, and it’s as much good as bad – and even good and bad aren’t much use here, because really the problem is change, isn’t it, it’s just the constant, persistent, roiling up and down and side to side. Some stability, please. If only for a little while.

I am doing my best to lead in this space. I’m reassuring my colleagues, hiring more hands, getting things a bit more ship-shape. I’ve had someone start this week, and will have another colleague starting in another couple of weeks. By then things will be calmer, if not exactly…calm. That is, we might be underwater, but at least the waves will have subsided.

Amidst all the changes, I’m making good progress. I was asked at short notice to speak at a conference – it’ll be my first 30 minute speech in a while. It’ll be a small audience – no more than about 250 people – and I’ve had great fun with the slides, following the advice of the great Russel Davies. I need to start buying his book for people in the speaking club. That’s how good it is.

(I’d also like to buy them copies of Be Funny or Die, but if you do that right now it’s unclear whether any of the money will ever go back to the author so uh. don’t do that right now.)

The conference is on Tuesday in Glasgow, and if you know you’ll be there please say hello. I’m on at 0950 in one of the rooms, unless I can’t find the room, in which case I’ll just be in the corridor. Early previews have said “It’s like a TED talk! (positive)” and “I’m looking forward to seeing it!”

Yes, I know. Obviously I know, and making the point as clearly as I’m making it is a bit heavy-handed. I’m not writing this for an award though, am I. I’m writing this for me.

When I feel overwhelmed by work that happens outside my control, I retreat into work I can control: words, body, movement that is all mine and relies on no-one else.