My First Blog
My name is Chris, but I’m not sure why anyone should care. After all, doesn’t everyone have blogs these days? It seems between YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Twitch, Tik-Tok, and all the other outlets people now have through which to express themselves, there wouldn’t be any shortage of people to watch.
I wonder, in fact, if things will get so crowded in the social-media sphere people will simply subscribe to their own channels and end up just watching themselves all day long!
Nevertheless, in case anyone does decide to read this, I feel I owe it to the reader to explain why I am starting a blog.
It’s because I joined Toastmasters.
“Why did you join Toastmasters?” you may ask. Well, I really love French toast, I like buttered toast, my mom used to make our family toasted jam sandwiches when I was young, I always enjoy the toasts people give at weddings, and there’s nothing better than getting toasty-warm next to a fire on the beach while making smores.
None of what I described has anything to do with Toastmasters, of course.
Toastmasters is an organization which helps its members become more proficient at public speaking. I’ve always enjoyed it, unlike most people, but figured it would be a good idea to hone my skills in that regard because once I retire I’d like to do some public speaking. If I can help inspire someone as I’ve been inspired by others over the years, that would be a good thing.
People’s fear of public speaking is legendary. In fact, when looking at a list of the top 20 phobias in the world (https://moneyinc.com/most-common-phobias/), fear of public speaking is ahead of the fear of spiders, fear of snakes, fear of needles, fear of flying, fear of open spaces, and a host of other terrors. I was thinking about this once, and I imagined a Rotary group meeting on the Titanic. One of the members has been chosen to be the speaker at the meeting and is more than a bit nervous about the prospect of addressing his contemporaries. A few minutes before the Rotary meeting is scheduled to begin, an announcement reverberates throughout the ship, “Attention, we have hit an iceberg and will probably sink. All hands abandon ship!” “Well,” says the would-be speaker, “that’s a relief!”
So what does this blog have to do with Toastmasters? It turns out when one joins Toastmasters there is a series of what are called “Pathways” which guide a person from the beginning stages of public speaking to more complex and challenging levels.
The level at which I find myself requires me to develop a blog and post at least 8 times in one month. You are reading the first of those 8 (and hopefully more) blogs.
Following this introductory blog, I will be focusing on one of my hobbies (I was going to say “passions,” but that term is REALLY overused these days). That hobby is playing drums.
With help from one of my twenty-something sons I made a YouTube channel and I hope I can somehow tie this blog in with the channel to develop a media empire. Or at least get my mom to read my blog and watch my videos.
If you or someone you know loves drums (and who wouldn’t?) go to https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCT7W-RQvSUw6hlobhj7FiEg and enjoy my feeble attempts at bursting onto the social-media scene.
For my next blog entry I will share some of the stories I’ve accumulated after a drumming career which started when I was 4 years old — in 1963, in fact. Stay tuned!
