Ethan Marcotte now blogs at Unstoppable Robot Ninja.

Weblog entry:

Stage fright.

Always happens on game day.

Got about four hours before I’m due to give my presentation on standards-compliant web design, and of course I can focus on the things that aren’t ready: a few CSS how-to’s don’t work in IE5x for the Mac, and the slide template I grabbed last night doesn’t validate. That last one’s really stressing me — I’ll probably rewrite the XSL before releasing the presentation to the public, so that I don’t come off as saying Do as I say, but not as I do with invalid slide markup.

But of course, there’s no time beforehand: hence, stress.

I’ve got tons of people telling me to breathe, that the content is great, that the examples are solid, that things will go smoothly because the little errors are just that: little. It’s just that:

  1. Public speaking is what this lil’ atheist imagines Purgatory to be like,
  2. I feel like this is the one shot that I’ve got to pay homage to my web development heroes, and
  3. See point #1, above.

So wish me luck. Buy me a beer at John Harvard’s afterward, if you’re in the neighborhood.

These last-minute rattled nerves are probably the main reason I should switch to decaf.

Comments

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