I gave my first ever conference presentation the other day. In fact it was more a cosy seminar type situation. Nevertheless it’s the first time I’ve ever been asked to speak at something like this so for two months prior I wrote and practised my presentation.

It went off without a hitch. The technology worked and it all went pretty well. I didn’t stumble too much. There were a couple of moments where I thought people were going to ask questions but they didn’t so I mumbled something and moved on. Questions were asked afterwards and they were easily dealt with and a couple of people talked to me about it after that. I’d say that if I was a complete failure everyone would have been too embarrassed to say anything. Now that it’s over I feel a bit lost because I’ve been focusing on it so much.

It’s a lot of mind over matter with something like this. I really had to train myself to think positively so I could get through it without having an anxiety attack. Even if I never do something like this again, I know I can do it. But would I do it again? I honestly can’t answer that. It was a lot of work to undertake outside of work hours (most of my prep was done during my holidays) and while I’ve benefitted personally it will be interesting to see if there are any other benefits – not that I’m expecting any.

I’m not keen on a 4am wakeup time which is what I did on Monday to get to Sydney to present at 1.30pm. I made the mistake of having a coffee after dinner which then kept me awake till around 11pm or so. So by the time I back to Adelaide I had a bit of a headache and had an early night Tuesday night and a really good night’s sleep. JJ had missed me. He said my sister was really bossy and we established that she’s even more bossy than me!

It was raining all day in Sydney on Monday and I hoped to bring some of it back here to Adelaide with me. I may have got my wish as we’ve had a couple of showers today and hopefully there will be more.