Flowers, singing, content

I entered the system for buying tickets for the LA ’28 Olympics, and my slot is today. I’ve been told there aren’t many things left so we shall see. It’s hard to think about life two years in the future. A year we can see reasonably clearly. Past that…not so much.

The weather has been gorgeous this week and so many flowers are out. The tulips are blooming. I went to Longwood last weekend, and this Wednesday over my “lunch break” I went to Chanticleer. This lovely little garden is about 20 minutes from my house so I try to go a few times a year during peak times (now, and in the fall of all things — they do an amazing job with fall flowers, which look fabulous against the peak leaf color).

I have also spent a lot of time this week singing. My downtown choir started back up for our last concert cycle of the season. This will be a quick one — we perform May 16 — but the music is relatively doable (vs. the last one…). I had my church choir rehearsal on Thursday where we sang through a lot of the Missa Gaia, which we are performing this Sunday. We have a dress rehearsal tomorrow. And of course we sing Sunday morning so this is a lot of singing occasions. (Plus I practiced the Missa Gaia music twice on my own this week.) On some level this has had to be thrown together as we just got through the Holy Week music. But there will be a slide show, a band, and our soloists are really good, so I trust they will carry a lot of it!

I’ve been doing a lot of podcast interviews this week and am honing my answers about Big Time. I also worked on the outline for Golden Hours and gave myself what I think is a challenging but doable schedule for writing it. I’m feeling slightly more like that will come together. In Big Time news: Some people who pre-ordered from Barnes & Noble told me they actually got their books this week! They’re not supposed to be available until May 5, but if you did get yours early I would appreciate your writing a review to share right around May 5 (and tell people about it! I mean, if you like it!).

In the meantime: content! This week’s guest on Before Breakfast was Bill McGowan, a communications coach and author of the book Speak Memorably. He gave some smart tips for better public speaking, so please check that out.

Among his tips: Practice 8 times as much as the length of your talk. I turned this tip into its own episode! While with certain talks you might do more than that (I definitely practiced my TED talk for more than 96 minutes, which is 12 x 8) I think for a lot of regular talks people do not put anywhere near that amount of time into preparation. Practicing more will generally make a talk better — and is a remarkably doable thing to do.

I also have an episode on “Don’t reject yourself” — if you want something go for it. The decision makers can reject you. You don’t have to do their work for them! And then I note that “Sometimes interruptions are the work.” Especially if you work in management it’s helpful to keep that in mind instead of getting frustrated.

Over at Vanderhacks, my Substack newsletter, I wrote about how “Your remembering self will thank you.” Doing big things can be challenging in the moment, but it’s wise to ask yourself what kind of memories you’d like to have, and not pay too much attention to present comfort. I also write about “One way to make your inbox more fun.”

Behind the paywall I talk about “How I spent a 13.5 hour plane flight.” The flight from Newark to Tokyo is very very long. I tracked my time during it, and shared the logs with readers. Alert Substack readers may have noticed a phenomenon this week that while my posts usually publish at 8 a.m. eastern time, this week several popped up at 7 p.m. eastern time. Perhaps you guessed why…. These are the posts I loaded into the system while I was in Japan. I set them to publish at 8 a.m….but of course 8 a.m. in Tokyo is 7 p.m. the day before in eastern time. Everything will be back to normal next week!