The movie Wicked is now streaming, but we did get to see it in the theater before it left. It is one of those films that is best seen on the big screen. Go out to movie theaters, people!
I absolutely enjoyed the play and liked the movie equally as much…
But this isn’t about the movie, rather the experience in the theatre and the Wicked Kid who sat behind us.
Remember in my last blog I mentioned that I didn’t know what I was going to write about? How I just rambled about walking around the neighborhood looking for ideas.
Well, God has other ways of providing interesting things for me to write about:
I had a visit from the police this morning.
There are times when you don’t know what to Blog about.
I know I need to create a calendar and list of ideas for upcoming blogs, but sometimes that takes as much work as writing the blog itself does.
So where do ideas come from? I have no idea.
Hi all,
I’ll be telling you about the Toastmasters speech in an upcoming blog once I get a good recording of it to share with you.
What I can tell you now is my nerves really got to me during the and I’m not really certain why.
I think it had to do with having to work with running my PowerPoint presentation on Zoom while maintaining eye contact with the camera while trying not to look at my script.
That’s all an excuse, I stumbled through it but I got it done. Surprisingly, people liked the speech, I’ll tell you about that soon.
I felt like I was back in school when I was scared to speak up at all. I’ve already told you about the one time in High School I gave a speech.
As an adult I was still nervous about doing any public speaking, but things began to change in our adult Sunday School when I began to speech up with my thoughts on what the teacher was saying and the Biblical verses we were studying. I then began finding myself volunteering to teach the class from time to time. My wife and I have taught together a few times as well. I was also being ask to do the Bible reading each week in class.
Then came the next and newest part of my life. An interest in Voice Acting. As a scriptwriter I wanted to know what the actor needed from me.
So, I took a voice acting class. I wasn’t expecting much, and certain I would be nervous stepping up to the mic in front of the entire class for the very first time.
You know what? I had no nerves what so ever and I read the script and performed with joy. I was so surprised by how I felt doing it I knew this was something I would continue to do. I would go on to take further voice acting classes over the next several years, have demo reels produced, and audition for roles.
So why did the nerves swell up during this speech? I really can’t say, but I won’t let them stop me from doing anything anymore.
Hope to have the speech up soon.
Kevin
If I’m going to keep this up, writing two blogs a week, I’ll need to learn how to be better plan them out in advance. I also have to schedule my writing periods for the blog in the middle of everything else I’m doing.
As mentioned in my previous post, I am currently working on a speech I’m going to be giving at Toastmasters this Saturday.
TOASTMASTERS
Thank you all so very much for reading my blogs over the last weeks as I wrote this series on comic books for my Toastmasters assignment. The series is complete, but I’m sure I have more to say about comic books in the future, but I thought it might be a good idea to tell you about what Toastmasters is and my involvement in it.
How the heck did they even let me do a whole project on Comic Books?
My previous blog post was officially the last of my Comic Book series for Toastmasters, but I have one more story to tell.
While I was telling you all about my love for the Golden Age of Super Heroes, about Earth 2, the Justice Society, and the All-Star Squadron, one evening I had a dream.
Over the last week I’ve been drawing a pseudo comic book cover based on that dream.
“Thank you, God, for bringing Mom and Dad home safely,” my mother would always say as we drove past the hospital. Both her parents had been in a patient there a number of times, and we praised God for them returning home safe and healthy.
That hospital has held many joyful and sad memories for us. Hopefully me being born there was one of the joyful ones.
My father also worked in the lab, and my mom would walk me over to have lunch with him from time to time.
So, what does all that have to do with comic books, and super heroes? Quite a lot, actually, at least for me.
The hospital had a small gift shop where visitors could purchase flowers, snacks, or stuffed animals for the patients they were coming to see. They also had a small magazine display rack, and upon it were a few (very few) small comic books.
These were digest size books that were reprints of other already published books. Most of these digests were done by Archie Comics, about Archie, his two girls Betty and Veronica, Jughead, and the rest.
But every so often there were other digest comics. These were mostly from DC Comics (actually, I don’t remember Marvel publishing Digests like these).
Hi All,
Hoping to have the next installment of my blog related to comics and super heroes tomorrow, but this morning we evacuated our apartment out of precaution because of the fires burning near us.
Please Pray for all those who have lost their homes and businesses, and that everyone else is safe and able to return home when the areas are safe for them.
Thank you all.
Kevin
Hi All,
May this New Year be enjoyable and successful for all.
I have several goals for this New Year, mostly focusing on my career, but to start off I’ll be writing this blog and posting twice a week. Which will hopefully be a whole lot better than what it has been in the past. This first blog series is about how comic books and super heroes have influenced my career. This is also part of a Toastmasters assignment, “Writing a Compelling Blog,” which when the blog series is complete, I’ll be giving a speech about the whole experience.
I write the above, and this blog, not just to teach those who need to know, but to acknowledge I have made the mistake of relying too heavily on computer spellchecker programs many times.
If you can’t recognize your own faults and learn from them, how can you teach others?
That squiggly red line for spelling mistake, the squiggly green line for grammar, they show up regularly in my work, and I try my best to squash the squiggles. (Squash the Squiggles. Would that have made a better title?)
A great thank you goes out to all who have stuck with me and reading both my blog and my serial ‘Revenge of the Masked Ghost’ for the last several months. Not only because I’m really glad to know you like my work, but that you’ve put up with a ton of mistakes slipping through. (Look there goes a red squiggly now; I just typed ‘miskates’. Interesting sounding word, but wrong.)
Went back and reread my book review as well as the Megamind blog, and I’m embarrassed by how many mistakes were in both of them. Really surprised when a totally wrong word shows up. Spellchecker can’t help with those. Have no excuse for any of it other than to say I write each blog (including this one) rather quickly at the last minute. Shouldn’t do that, I know. I did correct the mistakes in those entries.
I didn’t get hired for a writing assignment recently because the client found spelling mistakes in the writing samples I submitted. He thought I had a lot of good ideas, but couldn’t sit over my shoulder and correct each mistake that came along. Of course, he’s right. Even though there would be an editor on the project it’s her job to fit it into the over all theme and format of the book, not fix each and every wrong spelling or misplaced comma. Those should have been take care of long before it gets to the editor’s desk.
Lesson learned. I’m trying very hard to correct every mistake I can possibly find, though I will invariably miss something.
Sometimes I think the spellchecker is wrong. Is the word ‘correct’ used correctly? Computer says it’s not.
I admit to having a problem with ‘sound-a-likes’ such as ‘then’ and ‘than’. I need to pay more attention to that.
Next lesson. After you’ve squashed the squiggles, print the darn paper out and read it.
Yes, we’re supposed to be a paperless society, but it’s not going to happen. Print it out and take a pencil to it. There’s something even better you can do to find mistakes, read it aloud. It’s embarrassing, sure, but find someplace you can be alone and read to hear your own words. You may even find that the words (even spelled correctly) aren’t the right ones after all. Hearing is far more powerful then sight when it comes to catching problems.
When I’m finished with this blog, I’m going to follow my own instruction and print it and read it aloud.
Lastly, there are people who see bloggers as the new journalists of our society, if so they should at least try to learn the proper style of newspaper and journalistic writing and that includes getting your words spelled right.
I may not go back and correct every mistake in all the blogs I’ve written, but do intend on proofing again each of the chapters of the serial.
Again, thank you for putting up with my bad spelling, because without fixing that I can’t truly say…
Kevin Paul Shaw Broden
Four Names of Professional Creativity
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It all came to this
By kevinpsb4
On March 6, 2025
In 2025, Blog, Blog writing, Comic Books, ToastMasters, Toastmasters 4 Writers, Toastmasters Speech, Writing, YouTube
Engaging Humor – Writing a Compelling Blog
Okay, it took a couple of extra days, but I was finally able to do a recording of my Toastmasters Speech that was based on the blog series I began writing at the start of the year. So let’s get to it.
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