One Of My Greatest Fears

One of my greatest fears is speaking in front of an audience, which is a subset of a greater fear: appearing stupid in public. A reader is probably thinking, "Wait, you do all types of things that make you appear stupid on your blog and it's public." And while you're right, dear reader, what you don't see is the fretting and hesitating and waffling that happens at my end before and after I post anything.

Before I post something, it's, "I bet they're going to think this is stupid. I shouldn't post this. This is boring. What am I doing?"

After I post something, it's, "That was stupid. They think it's stupid and boring. I should take it down before anyone sees it. What did I do?"

I mention all of this because of something that happened this morning. I know it's taboo to talk about work, so I'll try not to be too specific, but I will say that it was a most uncomfortable experience to be in front of a room of people watching and waiting while I tried to get a webinar up and running. It took every ounce of calm I had to get through the hour-long ordeal as technical support attempted to help me over the phone. It was like being the star of a badly written and poorly produced one-man show.

It was a nightmare. One of my greatest fears had been realized. People can tell me it wasn't my fault and there was nothing I could do, but it doesn't help. I felt stupid the entire time and I still feel stupid.

Right now, I wish I could escape to a park, any park, and hike until I forgot about this morning. Unfortunately, that isn't an option. In the meantime, do you think the Haitian from Heroes makes house calls?