Tonight is the official kick-off for the NYC (Manhattan’s) ONE Walk which is the roll out of a whole new platform for JDRF’s Walk (the evening is called Progress to Type None).  The purpose of the event is to discuss research developments over the past year (artificial pancreas, complications, encapsulation, smart insulin, restoration, and prevention), upcoming Team Walk plans, and the new website for the walk this year (thank God)… AND guess who the opening speaker is… ME.  Guess who I get to introduce? Jeffrey Brewer (I just found this out 15 minutes ago… yikes).

Today seems like a GREAT day to shake-off all this fear stuff that has really been nagging me since my 35th diaversary last week (check out the comments section of that post… yay DOC).  Let’s face it though… I’m not going to simply shake it off (although I really LOVED Scott’s comment “Yes, thirty five years is a long time – but it’s just a series of individual days, and so far you’ve survived every single one of them. There will be many more, and I’m sure you’ll survive those too.”)  So awesome. 

So, what’s my plan, you say?

Redirecting scared energy.  Granted this is an experiment… but, I think this could work (read: OMG this better work).  I have a lot more to read at this event than I thought and I haven’t actually seen the powerpoint that I will speaking along to (terrible sentence structure by the way… ending with a preposition.  “Along to”… cringe worthy).

But here’s the really great part… I get to speak a tiny bit about Alecia’s Stem Cells and with that, I will absolutely talk about the goals of this team.  That puts me in fighter mode.  That takes me out of worry mode.  I really need to get back to outlining that part though (geez where is this day going?).

Also on a slightly humorous side note: in my introduction tonight I am supposed to state that I am our Walk’s Corporate Team CHAMPION.  When I was a kid, my brothers and I would wrestle (although this story applies to most games we played).  When someone won, they SANG (often while flexing their muscles), “I am the CHAMPION, YOU ARE THE WIMPISS BREATH”, over and over (there was a tune involved, I promise).  I still don’t even know that wimpiss breath means but it had something to do with being a wimp and it sort of sounded bad.  It is damn near impossible to think of saying that line tonight, CHAMPION,  and not flexing like a professional wrestler from the 80s and then raising my arms up and hopping up and down like Rocky (I may just do the flexing anyway).

Tonight I get to embrace my fear of public speaking yet again.

I WILL redirect my fear.

I am forced to be brave.

When you’re SCARED but you still do it anyway, that’s BRAVE. -Neil Gaimon