Day 39 of 100 intentional, reflective steps.
I ran for public office once. Speech day was great. I wore a nice linen hot pink (very “in” color in the ’80s’) dress and non-fugly shoes. (Shoes were my usual demise. My poor family thrift store budget didn’t allow for great shoes.) But I gave a short, direct and well placed speech to the high school studentbody. The other numb-nuts candidate wore ripped jeans and T shirt. He plunked down on the edge of the stage waving his hands back and forth like he was conducting the drug saturated Woodstock crowd sway. People yelled and hollered for him. They golf clapped for me. Polite.
A teacher pulled me aside to talk. In that moment, hidden backstage by huge blue velvet curtains he simultaneously crushed and reinvigorated my hope. “Jill. You will not win this election but I have never heard a student give a better speech to a crowd.” With that vote of confidence I felt my shoulder rise with a new dream. I loved speaking. I loved the microphone. The one thing that scares more people than almost anything else, besides a Trump presidency or venomous snakes on a plane, was FUN for me. And I was good at it. The election was just a vehicle to get me moving towards a new possibility.
I still love teaching and speaking. It’s part of my DNA. And now so is writing and telling stories.
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