"...I'm in love with your teeth"

Have you ever received a standing ovation?  Has that question ever crossed your mind, or some other version like "I wonder what that feels like"?  Not me.  I have never really liked to be the center of attention.  Maybe at family dinners when I was being a brat, but not in public or school or work.  I don't hate to be in front of a room full of people, but just didn't seek it out.  I have considered in the past what it might feel like to be on stage performing.  I've never done that.  I have close friends who love it, feed off of it.  I just don't care to do that......I'm not even comfortable advertising the fact that I have a blog.  I'll talk my friends' ears off, but who cares about sharing with the world?  Apparently, now, I do........

This weekend after 2.8998989 days of listening to other people speak, I finally got up on stage at the very last moment.  Once on stage, the crowd did not exist, just me and my little world, bouncing around in my big brain.  I left the stage and saw nothing but a straight path to Lisa, then Jeremy, then my chair.  Once in my safe zone and the attention was on someone else, I realized that I had just received a standing ovation.  WEIRD!  I don't think it really sank in until today.  I can see how someone might get addicted to that feeling.

A few months ago, one of my favorite people from high school asked what I had been up to.  My response was a quick "discovering that I'm the coolest girl I know."  It was kind of a joke, but kind of true as I was finally pulling my sad, leaking breakup face out of the pond of tears on my apartment floor.  It was a nice realization that things were really getting better....even if it took more than a year.  His response was "the last person to know, that's so you."  Jokes or not, that conversation stuck with me. 
Right before I moved to Texas I had a short conversation about real life beginning.  The response I got was "this is real life."  Short and sweet sticks with me I guess.  Anymore than that and we didn't have a meaningful conversation because I was unable to keep my attention on one thing.  This weekend 'real life' came up often.  I kept thinking about "this is real life" and how the person saying it might be one of the only people I know living that way.  Apparently this weekend I proved yet again, that I'm the last person to know.  I finally feel like this IS real life and I AM the coolest girl I know.   (not in a Paris Hilton "that's hot" kind of way, but in a grounded, accepting way that makes my friends equally awesome) 
I didn't even realize I was getting a standing ovation until everyone else was sitting down again.  It doesn't matter, I finally got it.

Everyone should experience a standing ovation.....show the world something that evokes it.  If you haven't yet....make it happen.  If you haven't been to The Landmark Forum...DO IT.  You don't have to use the lingo or buy the book or drink any cool aid...you just have to crawl out of your head long enough to see that the world is fun!  If you just read that and said "my world IS fun"....proactively make it fun for everyone around you.  You don't even have to hug it out.