At the Kairos weekend I was suddenly appointed music leader. Suddenly. No preparation time. I had my song book but I thought the page numbers in the songbooks the guys had were different than in mine, so I had to transpose. I had an old list of songs that I knew and I made a new short list off that. I had the 6 page program schedule and needed to fit the right songs into the most suitable places. There were two music stands so I put the songbook open on the left one and the agenda and the lists on the right.
Then I went into ADD meltdown!. This is not the same as brain freeze, but just as bad. I was shuffling through papers and pages and couldn’t find the ones I wanted and some of the papers had gotten stuck inside the song book and the meeting was about to start and I was confused and frustrated and stressed and frantic and flipping pages and shuffling pages and couldn’t think and and and —– and I just stopped.
Stepped away, took a few deep breaths, said a short prayer, and went back and it all went fine. ADD meltdown – no fun. Turns out the page numbers were the same in all the books – I still haven’t figured that out. 
doug
ADDadultstrategies 
I read your blog entry with a twisting stomach. Years ago I was to give the keynote address at a conference. My speech, which had taken a lot of writing, some of it at the last minute the night before, was good and informative and inspiring — keynotes are supposed to be all of that. As I got well toward the end of it, but still far from done, I turned the page and discovered there were no more pages. At all. Midsentence, I was done. I was sufficiently flustered that I couldn’t wing it, which I am capable of doing under better circumstances. It was plain awful. I told my audience what happened, managed to wrap it up with a small shard of grace (I thought) and got down from the stage. And had to be called back for questions. And felt guilty for accepting the check they gave me. The missing pages had never come out of the printer.
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yeah, it feels awful, but facing it and owning up is a great way to handle it. i wish the politicians i favor would do that – “yes, I flip flop. when new information comes up that shows i was wrong, i change positions”
once i was the key note, and then at the follow up seminar i lost my voice (anxiety, classic conversion. long story). the people were most sympathetic and supportive. hope you dont feel guilty anymore.
quote – guilt is a very useful emotion – for 5 minutes.
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I agree with your strategies and encourage the use of soe with few grandsons and this
grandmother finds them useful also. Keep it up. Norene
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thank you. i hope they are useful to your grandsons
thank you for looking and for commenting and for your prayers
doug
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