Hi all,
Thank you all for your prayers for my father. He has a lot of healing ahead of him. Because of that I’ve been on the road a lot and haven’t had a lot of time to think of blog post ideas. Hopefully I will do better next week.
Tag: Toastmasters Page 1 of 2
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?
It first began by reprinting newspaper comic strips, and then it illustrated adventure stories had previously been in pulp novels and magazines, then the detectives put on masks and a man could leap tall buildings in a single bound. It was the Golden Age of Comic Books, the Golden Age of Super Heroes.
As mentioned previously, though I had read a few other comics, the first series I was committed to reading every issue was All-Star Squadron. A book that took place during that “Golden Age.”
I would discover and read other books at that time, some Justice League of America, Brave & and the Bold which would be replaced by Batman and the Outsiders, and The New Teen Titans.
When I was young, during my Elementary School and Junior High years, I was struggling with reading. It was recommended to my parents that I should take further classes and have special tutors. One such tutor was in an after-school period on campus, while another one was off campus at a place called “The Reading Game.” These tutors helped me, but there was other help that I received that would improve my education.
It was during this period of time I first discovered comic books, as mentioned in my previous post, and I was regularly reading them… and I was reading them not just looking at the artwork (and I’ll tell you about the artwork and artists in a later post).
One day when my parents are having a ‘parent/teacher’ meeting with my special reading tutor to talk about how I was doing. They brought up the fact that I was reading comics, and asked if this was a good thing or should they take the comics away to have me read “real” books.
“This is KPSB radio, beginning its broadcast day.”
My name is Kevin Paul Shaw Broden ‘Four Names of Creativity’.
I have always imagined my initials as the call letters of a radio station. Not any Top 40 pop station, or 24 hours of talking heads; no, my station exists in the golden age of radio of the 1930s to the 1950s. When tales of adventure ruled the airways.
That was the beginning of my very first Toastmasters speech, and as this blog series is part of an upcoming speech, I thought I would start here.
Before comic books, and while super heroes existed inn Saturday Morning Cartoon, I was discovering them on the radio.
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.
Hi All.
Hope everyone has had a blessed Christmas and happy holiday season.
It’s been nearly a year since my last blog post.
Did you like my interpretation of Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer? He is the Shiny One.
Though I did update my Voice Over Demo Reel last month.
This post is to ‘reawaken’ my blog here and keep it going in to the new year.
This was my first 2024 speech for Toastmasters, I had begun working on it in November with a Christmas theme, but there were no speaker slots in December so reworked it as the first speech of 2024. This is for my Level Three “Engaging your Audience with Humor” speech.
I am a member of Toastmasters 4 Writer.
Have you ever considered the Internal Logic in the Christmas song “Rudolph The Red Nose Reindeer”? I have, and it scared me.
Recently, I did my third speech for Toastmasters.
My wife and I are members of Toastmasters 4 Writers in Burbank, California – District 52.
My second and third speech were connected because what I learned from giving the second speech would be applied to the third. The Second speech was about my family, especially my grandfather, James Shaw, who was from Ireland and came to America. There are many great stories I could tell about him and his life. When it came to telling the third speech I chose to focus on him as a Marathon runner, especially winning one in Belfast Ireland.
At the start of the year I had great 2020 Vision (go back and read the blog) – that vision had such great plans for the year ahead…
It didn’t go at all as planned (for none of us). Even before Covid struck, on the second day of the year I was told I was being laid off from my job which I had for 10 years.
So I was home, and soon my wife would be working from home as well. I truly believe that to be a blessing.
A family member is in the hospital (praise God not with Covid).
That all said, the year wasn’t all that bad for me. Being home most of the time allowed certain things to happen, or things for me to discover, that I wouldn’t have if the world was still going as it had a year ago.
I had already planned to take Voice Acting Classes, by the end of that first class I was determined to make Voice Over as part of my career. I soon found other classes and workshops I could do online that I wouldn’t have been able to do previously. Joined Toastmasters, got back into college courses, and became an Improv actor.
With 2021 about to start, I am confident that there many blessings that came to me through 2020 even as stressful as it was.
What is to come next, I am not entirely certain but am Determined to grab hold of each and every blessing that is to follow.
God Bless you all. See you in the new year.
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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