Toastmasters Tuesday #3: I Was Not Supposed To Be There
The moment you announce you won’t be doing something, and then a few moments later you end up doing just the very thing you said you wouldn’t do — do you get that feeling? Yes, just that feeling. A bit of craziness, a bit of kismet, a bit of heaven-knows-what. That’s exactly where I stood on a Saturday of October 2018. It was officially my third month as a Toastmaster, in reality probably the second. Our club was meeting on Saturdays then.
I got up early in the morning and walked to the venue recalling the speech I was supposed to give as I passed the alleys and narrow roads; my second ever speech, about all the crazy things I did in China during a study abroad trip. By the end of the meeting, the speech was over, but the day had just begun.
The executive committee members were staying back for a short meeting to discuss an upcoming contest — the Area Contest being cohosted by our club. We had guests from other clubs joining the mini meeting as well, and everyone was asked to stay back. It was probably the first time when I interacted with so many members beyond my own club. That was also the first time I heard the word Areas, PQDs, Area Secretaries, and the likes. By the end of that mini meeting, I found myself in the PR team promoting the Area Contest that was coming up in a week.
I liked it — designing and promotion had always been something I’ve enjoyed. But by mid day, I suddenly found myself as the co-chair of the entire event. Hadn’t I just messaged our club a few days earlier announcing my regrets of not being able to be active in the Area Contest? Well well. Our Contest co-chair had to attend a camp outside of the city, and all other slightly more experienced members of the club had one thing or the other.
Hey, I was not supposed to be there! screamed the conscious, worried, ever nervous side of me. I am just three months old! I don’t even know what is a contest, or a chair, or a table, or anything for that matter! I don’t even know anyone, what am I doing, anyway?
I found myself agreeing nonetheless, walking down the rabbit hole. What was waiting, I couldn’t tell. It can’t be that hard, right? It won’t blow up like a volcano, will it?
Of course there was help. I was guided by the most experienced ones, I had club members singing up to volunteer, I had two clubs holding my back so it wouldn’t fall apart. After a year and half of organizing events at my workplace and resigning for plans that would eventually fall apart, I appreciated the action — the momentum of the turning wheel.
Learning aside, keeping myself out there, working with people I had barely known, it was a challenge and mystery in itself. I am an introvert, never quite the loud one or the first one to say anything. The awkward one. I had to trust myself, and everyone else that it wouldn’t blow up.
It came, and went in the blink of an eye. Did we do well? Probably. The photographs tell their own stories — the blurred ones, the candid ones, the profile picture worthy ones.
I would like to think of it as stars drawn across the face of the sky, a constellation I might have never connected otherwise. I met people who became friends, by a chance meeting of the very thing I said I wouldn’t do.
I was not supposed to be there. I was not. But then I was.
You couldn’t tell. I couldn’t tell. We’ll never be able to tell.
It’s Contest Season again as Clubs and Areas prepare for the Humorous Speech and Evaluation Contest. Scrolling through the messages, updates, and photographs transported me back into a time, when all of these were till very nascent. They still are.
