On Saturday morning I will be moderating a panel at the St. Louis Interactive Festival.  I’m so excited about this event.  After last year’s Festival, I made it my goal to be considered knowledgable to be asked to speak and lookie here!

Except…

Oh dear God I’m so nervous I feel like I’m going to be sick.  And I’m only a moderator.  I’m just asking the questions.  I’m not even speaking as a definate authority.  But I’m still nervous as all get out and here’s why:

(Don’t you love how naturally I segued into this next paragraph thereby sucking you all in to read about my neurotic little mental breakdown?  You didn’t even know it happened did you?  You had no idea you were being manipulated. Muahahaha!!!)

Okay – so I’ve never really “officially” been in the workforce.  The few years I had between marriage, college graduation and children were spent developing a career of sorts in writing and editing while also coaching gymnastics and working as a personal trainer.  In short, I’ve never had a “real” job.  I’ve never had a steady paycheck or limited vacation time (a huge perk to working for yourself, by the way).  I’ve never been to an office party or had to wear a suit to work.

In short – my life has been awesome! Ahem.

So I get around all these uber successful people and I’m all, “OMG (I actually think omg ) why would they want to listen to me?  So I’ve written a couple of books – who cares?  I did all of that in my pajamas!  I’ve never been in the rat race.  What do I know?” 

And on and on it goes until I’ve got myself all in a tizzy thinking about standing in front of a group of people who are all really career focused, employed, making the big bucks, doing cool things like hosting radio shows, producing movies, running major publications…

And then, of course, there is the importance of figuring out what to wear!  Oy!

So I’m taking deep breaths tonight.  And I thought about having a stiff drink but I feel like I’m getting sick so I settled for NyQuil instead.

It’s going to be fine.  I’ll picture them all in their underwear and all will be good.

Plus, I need to remember that I haven’t exactly had my head in the mud these last few years.  I mean, I have produced three pretty spectacular human beings and I do maintain a blog that’s all the awesome.

…

Okay, I was hoping that if I patted myself on the back a little, I’d feel better, but I’m still nervous and now I feel like a dork for tooting my own horn.  I think it’s time for me to go to bed and wake up tomorrow with a new sense of empowerment.

Yeah – that’s what I’m gonna do…