I don’t consider myself funny. I don’t think of myself as a good public speaker. I was in charge of announcements for ten LAN parties. I used a megaphone and I tried to get people to pay attention. Most people thought I was annoying and disruptive.<\/p>\n
Last weekend, on October 18th, my friend Jeremy got married and he asked me to “MC” his reception. I have to say that in the past, after being asked to help with weddings of my friends, I had sworn off ever helping again. But, this seemed very different. The wedding was small and personal. It wasn’t fancy or long. It was more of a private party with two groups of families and friends getting together for a good time. So I agreed to do it.<\/p>\n
Conviction is the root of good public speaking. An idea that you hold strongly, and truly believe, is going to demand to be spoken to a group of people who are listening to you. I spent a week coming up with things to say. There was some fretting and worrying about saying something that ruins someone’s wedding. But, like much of my past experience, I decided to “just wing it”. I am often a very strongly convicted individual and all I did was say things I thought were true to myself, and needed to be said to the people there. I think everyone who spoke at the reception did the exact same thing I did.<\/p>\n
Listener said I could do this professionally. But, the irony is that I don’t think I could. Two strangers getting married with their friends and families around them … I would have nothing to say except luke-warm, mediocre glurge (a perfectly cromulent word, by the way).<\/p>\n
In the end, I had a great time and I enjoyed doing something to help out Jeremy and Annie. It was fun. Lots of people thanked me for doing a good job, but it was all my pleasure. Congratulations to the new couple and I hope they enjoy each other in the good times and the bad.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I don’t consider myself funny. I don’t think of myself as a good public speaker. I was in charge of announcements for ten LAN parties. I used a megaphone and I tried to get people to pay attention. Most people thought I was annoying and disruptive.
\nLast weekend, on October 18th, my friend Jeremy got married […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rps.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rps.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rps.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rps.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rps.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rps.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rps.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rps.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rps.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}