Fear. Nausea. Glory.

Last spring, I participated in IgniteBend. I was scared, excited and thought I was downright nuts for signing up and presenting about my hopes of being a natural mother and completely failing. My goal was to be funny and make people laugh. I worked really really hard on my presentation and over practiced it. My husband was part of the first IgniteBend and performed a song about getting laid-off. The ironic part was he was laid off for real two days before.

You're probably asking yourself ... what is IgniteBend? Here's a description I grabbed from their website ....

If you had five minutes on stage what would you say? What if you only got 20 slides and they rotated automatically after 15 seconds? Launch a web site? Teach a hack? Talk about recent learnings, successes, failures? Around the world communities have been putting together Ignite events to show their answers.

The performance was a hit (or maybe I'm having another delusional moment?). Friends, people that I work with, complete strangers told me their stories and I didn't feel so much like a failure anymore about nixing the whole natural momma thingy. I felt as my friend Kate would describe fear, nausea and glory all rolled into one.

A couple months ago, my friend Georell told me that AdFed was going to do a mini IgniteBend and that I had to submit something. I racked my brain ... what was I passionate about and could be funny about at the same time. My topic ended up being "Vacationing in Nebraska."  So many people have no idea where the state is located so I worked away, got the slides done and then meant to practice on Wednesday.  On Wednesday, I got a bit of sad new that an old co-worker had passed away. With that occupying my mind, I completely forgot about working on my presentation. It wasn't until 10 a.m. (two hours before the presentation) that I started working on it. Let's just say, I felt that I crashed and burned when I went to present. Since I submitted this for IgniteBend 4, I really need to change a few things and practice, practice, practice.

So here is my promise -- for all of you who saw that presentation, the next one will be even better. I promise because I totally left all the funny stuff out of it and need to wittle it down.

If you have a burning idea or am passionate about something and can present it in 5 mins, go here and submit. You'll thank for the feeling of fear, nausea and glory.