Well, I survived.

I started throwing stuff in my suitcase days in advance and at one point thought, I rather like how that looks. I think I’ll take a picture. You’re welcome blog world! (Those aren’t the actual books, just hard-backed blow ups, in case you were wondering.)

I’ve returned from my cross-country trip to D.C. where I, Betsy Kerekes, spoke at a conference and have lived to tell the tale.

When I whined about having to give a speech in front of a boatload of people, many of you said, “You’ll be great!” And I thought, “How do you know?”

But in truth, well, you were right. 🙂 It went really well, and the feedback was warm and positive. As I walked back to my book table, several people said nice things to me along the way. I forgot to turn my recording device off right away, so my husband was able to hear proof of that.

The man who spoke ahead of me and who does this sort of thing all the time, gave me the best compliment. He looked at me in all seriousness and said one word: “Fantastic.” That was validating, y’all.

Let me back up a bit. We’re talking months of nerves leading up to this one hour of public speaking. As my dear friend who volunteered to accompany me and I pulled up to the Congressional Country Club in Bethesda, MD, I said, “What am I doing here? I can’t do this!”