My friends, it has been an insane couple of weeks. I think the last time I checked in was right before school started or maybe it was the snow day but basically since my last day of work on December 20th things have not felt normal or routine and today I'm leaving for PodFest which I'm very excited about.
I'm speaking on stage in front of people for the first time in five plus years. The last time I was supposed to speak was at WordCamp US 2019 but they started it on Halloween or like it was and I wasn't missing my kids you know I have small kids and I'm not missing Halloween for a conference.
I told them that so they scheduled me for the day I flew in and invariably my flight was delayed which I also made them aware of but you know I understand that WordCamp US is a big conference and whatever right this is six years ago now so or five years ago now so so I actually don't remember the last time I was on stage because then the pandemic happened and then during the pandemic I switched niches so I'm not doing WordPress stuff anymore and so I've been making a name for myself in the podcasting solopreneur automation space and so I applied to speak at PodFest shout out to my friend Alexandre Filippo who encouraged and guided me to do that and I'm real excited I'm gonna be talking about automations on stage and I just I can't wait but I think that you know I mean when it's like been a very cold winter and we got a dog and things have felt extra chaotic and so I am excited that for this trip to be a little bit of a reset it's in Orlando so I'm visiting my brother and we're going to Disney World but I just like I didn't sleep very well last night and now the morning I have to leave feels extra chaotic and I can't focus and I have a lot of stuff to pack it's the first time I'm packing for like speak like my speaker list conference stuff which usually involves a little bit more tech I usually don't bring my laptop with me for short trips because I don't you know I want to be focused on the trip and so you know I'm packing the laptop and the AV stuff and my clicker to make sure that everything connects well and it's it feels like there's a lot of stuff I'm also this is like some dumb behind the scenes stuff maybe but I want to be more intentional about what I wear on stage you know I used to just wear like you know the hat that I wore was the hat my speaker hat or whatever so people would recognize me during the conference and that used to be like a fedora or a tribly and then it became a Castro cap and now it's like a standard issue baseball cap you know it's yellow and it's got my podcast logo on it and so that's that's a good one for me to stand out but you know I want to dress like a little nicer on stage not like three-piece suit or anything but I think like jeans and a button-down would be good and I just don't think like a hat baseball cap would look good like that so that's also kind of I guess I feel so scatterbrained because there's a lot of stuff competing for my attention right now between the family stuff and the dog stuff and then the work stuff and this is a working trip because obviously I just took two full weeks off and there was the snow day and and the conference stuff and hanging out with my brother and it's just like a lot and I'm kind of using this space to talk through it and decompress which is helping but I also just I haven't checked in in a while and I you know if my last couple of conferences are any indication then I'll be checking in a little more frequently this week than usual kind of talking through what I've learned at the conference and thoughts I'm having and stuff like that so anyway if you're gonna be at Podfest let me know say hello I'm speaking at at 11 15 a.m. on Thursday and I think Peninsula 3 so that's it for this episode thanks for listening I'll see you out there