Day 66: Ideas Worth Spreading Around the Block or the World?

The bar is set so high for TED and TEDx speakers.

My first step in figuring out what to discuss during my own TEDx talk will start with me watching TED talks.

This exercise could go one of several ways.

I might be inspired.

Perhaps, I’ll stumble upon a framework I can use.

Or, I could feel incredibly more terrified about this journey I’m about to embark on.

This second, I’m feeling the latter emotion after hearing Shonda Rhime’s: My Year of Yes talk. The words she used and sounds she incorporated into her speech were SO elegant. The images she conjured. The emotions.

The way she played tennis with her audience…a fun and cool little tennis game throwing the word “titan” around was kick-ass.

I wish I could deliver a talk so eloquently. I’d “settle” for writing such an eloquent speech on paper. I’d be okay if my delivery flopped but those words — -the hum — -the Southern waitress made their way out of my head and onto paper.

Gosh, soooooooo intimidated is how I felt after watching that TED talk.

Rhythm and rhyming are hard for me. How about you?

What’s more she had a rhythm to her talk which brings me to a subject that makes me nervous. Nervous in a nerdy way.

So here we go…there are a few writing techniques that terrify me. Take for instance, spitting rhymes…whether it’s doing this in Washington Heights during one of my last summer nights before I went to NYU OR at school. In either scenario, I always felt like the odd man out. The only setting in which I felt free slapping together a few rhymes was during the 80s when those sitcom theme songs would air. My favorite was MASH because it was instrumental — thus making it perfect for my silly rhyming games about mash potatoes and such.

Yet still….I completely admire anyone who can rhyme or deliver a talk with some rhythm.

and then there’s adjectives

Fast forward to my days as an NYU freshman…I was NOT in the Writing Workshop Honors class. To me this meant that my writing was not good enough to be read. Yes, I am my toughest critic.

I’d spend my days instead constantly sweating my peers who were in Honors classes. I would look over their shoulders and admire their use of precise adjectives. Other people may have been admiring their clothes or weekend escapades….yet I was so jealous about their words. Where did they get those adjectives from? Still today, adjectives are beautiful little creatures and I hope to use them more.

lastly…my ability to memorize a 13-minute to 18-minute talk

At this point, I feel like when I get up on that stage I will undeniably prove that “mommy brain” is a real thing. If I could word cloud Shonda’s talk, I’d imagine that she used a wide range of words. And she carefully memorized and shared them with the audience without a single error. Yes, Shonda does have three children. However, my brain cells were killed year one when I decided to nurse my identical twins. As a result, I feel like I may be operating at a deficit when compared to Shonda’s ability to memorize such a nuanced talk.

So where does this all leave me? Truthfully, not feeling very chipper.

Yet, I’ll aim for a silver-lining. It leaves me in a place where I feel like I can still learn from the best. The key is I have to realize that the best took several steps to get there.

It might even be interesting for me to do some more heavy lifting. I should look at old speeches perhaps from the same people who delivered some of the best TED talks. My goal is not to feel better about myself but to notice how far a given speaker had come. It’s not a bad idea to study the edits in their mannerisms or range in vocabulary or whether there was a rhythm to their prior talks.

It’s time for me to start my TEDx journey. Part of it includes that I have to succumb to the fact that things will need to get a little messy before they get ironed out neatly for the world to see.

Wish me luck.

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