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Camera shy.
Did I ever mention to you that I'm camera shy. Not only camera shy but morbidly afraid to open my mouth in front of a crowd. Sure it's a common fact that what most people fear most is public speaking. But my "fear" is more like a coma inducing psychosis. If I've got a speaking situation coming up I will actually lose sleep, weeks before the event.
There have been occasions of which I was due to give a presentation that actually had to be blasted on beta-blockers and Xanax just to get me to the meeting.
Point here is it's bad, real bad.
Several years ago (back when I was in advertising) my firm had moved into and renovated an old loft in downtown. Due to the work we were doing and the revitalization effort that our downtown was going through at the time the local television station came by our office to do a story about our business and to highlight the work that was being done on our building. I was chosen to talk to the reporter "on camera", and swoon about how much we "love the beautiful, historic...blah blah blah". Anyway, I'm prepped. I know what I'm going to say. I'm confident. Noooo problem! The reporter and I discuss the "flow" of our "candid on-air conversation". All's good, I'm ready to go.
Lights. Camera. Action.
Nothing. I'm standing in front of the camera, the reporter is talking to me and I can't open my mouth. My mind takes off on a sensory overload trip to Cuba. I am totally immobile. Squirrel on a transformer so to speak.
Cut. Cut.
Soon as the light goes off *blink* I'm fine. Embarrassed, but fine. I apologize to the reporter, she laughs and brushes it off. She goes over with me again what we're going to discuss. She ask one last time if I'm ok and I give her a thumbs up.
Lights. Camera. Action.
My God, I've turned to stone. The reporter asks me a question, I don't respond. I am catotonic at this stage. I know everything that's going on around me, but I cannot respond. Finally my partner steps in and she is able to continue on with the interview. I'm finally able to regain my composure, I go to the restroom and sob like "a little girl". It really messed with my head.
Then there was the time I was in a 8 foot by 8 foot room with five attorneys trying to train them on a program that I developed for their firm. Everything was fine for the first thirty seconds, then the attorneys started acting like... well.. lawyers. Instead of me trying to impart a bit of knowledge to them, they decided that would try to "one-up" each other. The "one-upsmanship" took the form of questioning me and drilling me about every infinitesimal detail about the program. In a training situation I'm usually prepared for these types, but these guys were beyond... well they were just beyond! Don't get me wrong I don't mind someone questioning me but, when the questions are coming at me in an adversarial way I get frustrated. Well I got frustrated. I got frustrated and I started sweating. The room was probably 74 degrees and I break-out into this musky body storm. I'm getting sweat on the chair, sweat is puddling on the table, I even have a sweat pool in my navel. My socks are soaked, hell I even have sweat coming out of my shoes, I squish when I walk. I'm not sure if this fits the camera shy thing, but it was one heck of an embarrasing para-sympathetic nervous reaction. I finally wade through (excuse the pun) the training session. As I'm finishing up I let them know in no uncertain terms that it would be in their best interest NEVER to get me up on the stand. I would rain on their parade.
I'm writing all this because tomorrow at 11 am, I've got a presentation to give to the board of directors of a fairly large company. We're trying to persuade them to use our program and let us do a lot of work for them. The problem I have now is I have no idea what I'm going to be talking about after the first hand-shake.
I wonder if I can stitch Maxi-Pads into my t-shirt?
Suggestions? Uh, can you spare a hit of Xanax?
12/2/2003 10:53:49 PM
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