Getting Toasty

A few months ago I joined an organization called Toastmasters International. Sadly it has nothing to do with the act of "toasting" alcoholic beverages nor does it have to do with learning how to perfectly toast a piece of bread. What it does focus on is public speaking.

Why do you want to improve your public speaking skills, Chris? Is a question the few of you reading this may be asking yourselves. 

The answer is simple. If you plan on conquering the world, you're gonna need to know how to address it publicly to large masses of people at a time. Plus, my 7 a.m. slot for Tuesday mornings was open so I said what the hell. 

For the uninitiated or for those of you just too lazy or not properly enticed to click the hyperlink in the first sentence of this article, Toastmasters helps anyone who wants help in honing their skills in regard to speaking in front of people.

There's a large percentage of people that suffer from Glossophobia which is the fear of public speaking. I am not one of those people, however. My biggest fear is not being able to pee in a urinal when a dude is next to me peeing which is called Paruresis. Unfortunately there's yet to be a Paruresis International so I've just decided to settle with Toastmasters.

The meetings are fun and once you join you get two awesome books that give you an assignment schedule to follow. Each assignment is a speech that you are to prepare and execute following certain criteria for each individual speech. 

Once you've recited your speech at a meeting in front of other members you're evaluated on your speech subject, your voice performance and pace and your body language. Every week is a mini-competition where people with the best skills for that day are awarded a ribbon. As you can see by the pic that accompanies this article, I've kinda got a knack for this shit.

The speech subject matter can be about whatever we wish it to be, which makes for some interesting speeches from yours truly.

SO, since there's a handful of you that like to read my writing (literally, about 5 of you) I decided to post each speech I do. On an average, I do about one prepared speech every 3 weeks so for those of you looking to kill 5 minutes at work, I've got you covered 5 min out of every 3 weeks.

You can find the first two speeches here and here.

You're welcome.