Today’s topic: two recent and surprising times I was nervous.

Your daily Lex.

Okay, something about the way I said that pre-theme-song intro sounded very newscaster to my ears.

So let’s hear it again.

I’m literally going to copy and paste how I introduced this episode, so you can maybe already notice, but it really sounded like classic TV news anchor on the local news especially.

Here we go.

Today’s topic: two recent and surprising times I was nervous.

I’m literally laughing at myself as I play it back.

More on that story at 11.

So here are two times I was nervous.

One was last night, rehearsal, and it was funny because we were going to be rehearsing Act 2, which is the one with all the shenanigans, where we have to do lots of nonsense, lots of craziness, lots of kooky stuff.

Plus there’s, you know, the first half of the act has a bunch of dialogue.

I got a lot of dialogue in that act.

I have a lot of dialogue in Act 1 and Act 2, and then my Act 3 is pretty easy.

But I was especially nervous about all the physical stuff because I just, I don’t know how to memorize it.

I don’t know how to work on memorizing it, so I was just trusting that my body would still know what to do.

And I was saying, gosh, I’m genuinely nervous.

I’m not usually nervous at rehearsal.

And everybody else in the cast on my side of the stage, because there’s a group of us that start stage right, was like, Yeah, no, I’m totally nervous.

Like, I don’t know if it’s the script or the director or what.

It’s a little bit of everything.

And I was saying this to Lauren on the way home.

She starts stage left, and she said, Oh my God, we had exactly the same conversation on stage left.

So it’s good to know that everybody was nervous, but I’m not usually nervous before a rehearsal.

Rehearsal is for rehearsing.

You can mess up at rehearsal, and it’s okay.

But we’re all nervous about it, which is fine.

It went pretty well, as it turns out.

I feel much better now.

That was thing one.

Thing two was today I had my first ever Lexon Tech Live Zoom.

When I was launching Lexon Tech, I had no business model.

I thought maybe one day I’ll do sponsorships, but for now I’ll just put up ads for my own apps.

And I did that.

And instantly, like within hours or less of launching, somebody was like, Hey, are you going to have memberships so we can support you?

I was like, Okay, I’ll work on that.

So I did.

And people joined, which was very flattering, honestly, very kind and thoughtful and made me feel good.

But so now you have members, and when I was launching the membership, I was like, What should I include?

And so I was looking at Daring Fireball, which doesn’t really do memberships.

I looked at Cocky.org.

I looked at Six Colors, and I was looking at how different people do memberships.

I was like, I can do a podcast just for members.

I can do full-text RSS feeds.

I can do a membership Discord.

And then I was like, Jason and Dan do some member Zooms on Six Colors, and people seem to really like that.

And I was like, I don’t know if anybody will join.

I’ll probably post this Zoom thing and nobody will show up, but whatever.

I can make it a perk.

And it’s been a month since I launched, and I said I would do one a month, so I was like, It’s time to do the Zoom.

And we did it, and a bunch of people came, and it was fun.

But I was nervous going into it because I was like, I don’t know what this is going to be.

If it’s just one or two people, that could be fine, but it could also be a little bit awkward.

If it’s everybody, how do you keep it sane and coherent?

Do I need an agenda or not?

And I decided I’m an improviser.

I can just go in.

I don’t need a true agenda, and I would have a couple topics in my mind.

The two topics that I had were if people had article suggestions, and if anybody’s dealing with the same problem I do, which is I have app icon blindness in my dock on my Mac sometimes, and the conversations that, meaning often I can’t find the Zoom icon, even though it says Zoom on it, and I know roughly where it is in my dock.

Like, I just, I’m blind to it for some reason.

And I got some cool ideas and suggestions from people in that conversation that I think will turn into articles.

But it was great.

It was a lot of fun.

The conversation never faltered.

The only time that the conversation had any pause was like, By the way, if anybody has any article ideas, feel free to share them.

And it was like crickets.

I was like, Ah, so that’s like my job.

I have to come up with the articles, and you read them.

Fair.

But it was funny to me to—I like to observe my own nervousness sometimes because, like, these are— Okay, this sounds a little bit hokey, so forgive me for it, but I was like, these are your biggest fans, right?

These are the people who like you so much that they pay to support your site, and they’re showing up because you’re hosting a Zoom.

It’s probably the least intimidating audience, the one you should least feel nervous about being in front of.

And yet there I was feeling angsty and nervous.

But it went great.

I stopped feeling nervous about two minutes in, tops.

So that was fun.

Anyway, what a weekend I have coming up.

I’ve got rehearsal tonight.

It’s Thursday.

It’s not the weekend yet.

I’ve got rehearsal again Friday.

I got rehearsal again Saturday.

I got a comedy sports show Saturday night, and it’s not at our regular theater.

We’re doing it for a private event that’s a party with a couple hundred people, so that’ll be awesome.

I love doing mic’d improv.

I know it sounds maybe a little bit silly, but when you have a microphone on doing improv, like all of your lines get heard, like your asides and your funny whatevers can all get picked up.

There’s something cool about it.

And then Sunday I’m doing that Sherlock show, which if you remember, everybody else has a script and I don’t.

I got to go in and be Sherlock and solve mysteries and be funny while I don’t have a script, and I’m looking forward to that too.

Action-packed weekend.

I’m going to be missing an Eagles game during that improv show, so thank you for your thoughts at this difficult time.

Anyway, that’s my day.

Hope you’re having a great start to your October.

And here’s a thought.

Starter thought, not a thought leader.

That’s me.

I’m a thought leader.

Here’s a conversation starter.

I know some people had Halloween decorations up mid-September.

I have some theming in some of my apps, spoiler alert.

I don’t have it starting until around like October 20th or 21st.

Is that too late for Halloween theming, or do you think that seems just right?

I’m curious for your take.

Let me know somewhere.

Goodbye.

Lex.