#208 - The Workshop Went Well

I've been prepping all month for this workshop.

At some point last week, I told myself that I wanted to actually be proud of myself for prepping come the actual day, rather than being annoyed at my past-self for not putting in the reps.

Turns out, I did put in the reps.

The workshop went well.

Like, really great feedback, made connections with people, feel okay about doing this in a few weeks for my paid gig well.

Meetings are defaulting and they're in bad grooves and patterns and people do need to shake things up but they're not sure how.

So today we spent 45 minutes together, talking it over.

And it went well.

I'm really excited and I'm so glad that I actually followed through and did it.

Everything is going to work out, even if this career path isn't the one I stick with forever. I am going to be able to make it to the next step. I now have evidence of my work and that's huge for me to be able to put out there and make content with.

The thing about workshops is that I just have to keep doing them. I have to figure out how to market them and I want to make sure that I actually think through my marketing strategies long term.

For this workshop, I made some short videos. If LinkedIn is trying to pivot to video, I need to start making them over there. Like, TikTok here I come if I'm trying to fix meetings that's going to require telling a lot of people how to fix their meetings.

It's time for me to be less afraid. It's time to put the purpose over my personal hangups. It's time to go.

The whiteboard is helpful. I love a good whiteboard. Growing up, I had this massive chalkboard that we moved from house to house. It was always a huge hit. People would come over and write things. We would make lists. Sometimes the more artistic friends would draw, and we would erase around their art for months until my mom would wipe the entire thing clean. Really clean.

I'm so glad that I decided in high school that I wanted to have nice handwriting and forced myself to practice for years on end. I'm so thankful that my friend told me as an adult that the secret to having nice print handwriting is to write in ALL CAPS.

(Mmmm remember small caps? Just an absolutely incredible font edit choice. I used to love writing fake text messages into manuscripts just so I'd have an excuse to use small caps more often.

I used to write more. I should write more again.

I was really sad for a really long time. Things kept spiraling and I kept feeling like no one was telling me the truth. It was really hard to trust myself when I never felt confident that I was getting accurate reflections from people.

It's really hard for people to be honest about hard truths. Believing that it's their responsibility to tell me if I was doing something to offend them doesn't absolve my lack of understanding around how my behavior was impacting them.

There's a very large possibility that I've been numbing out for a long time because I wasn't sure I could handle reality. There's an even larger change that within that I became extremely selfish and lazy, a deadly combination that allowed me to feel bad and therefore render myself completely immobile when it came to moving forward in my life and making better choices and finding ways to improve at the things I'm not naturally talented at.

Networking is harder for me. People do dehumanize me because I'm fat. But like, there are plenty of fat people who networking is hard for and they get out there and try their best. Just because it's hard doesn't mean I don't have to try–it, in fact, does mean I just have to try harder.

I want to help people fix their meetings because I think meetings are so important. I think meetings matter more than almost any other medium we have for gathering. Every important decision in the world was made during a meeting.

Meetings matter.

I have a mission.

And it's like, to do damage control PR for meetings.

Because it's not their fault that they've got a bad rep.

No one was ever taught how to run a meeting.

Until now!