Who Moved My Cheese at Greensburg Toastmasters?!?

Wednesday night at our 100% virtual Greensburg Toastmasters meeting, we had two speakers (myself included). My speech was titled “Who Moved My Cheese?” as you can see from the image. Not only did I speak on the book and the experience of reading it for one of my classes at Slippery Rock, but I also discussed change in my own life from the last few years. Some of the events included:

• Adapting to online attendance at Toastmasters meetings and events during the pandemic in 2020 and 2021. 
• Being in a Toastmasters slump after achieving my first Distinguished Toastmaster award in 2019. 
• Having to engage in a new routine and change my habits after getting bad news at the doctor’s office in the Spring of 2021. 
• Leaving a job that I was at for over ten years (I worked at WIS for 13 years). This was a change that was necessary. In the beginning, it was stressful as my “cheese” was moved and I had to venture through a new “maze”. As 2022 rolled on, I started to see the benefits and had more success. 

Overall, the speech went very well, with a few minor suggestions for improvement. I do need to change my habits when it comes to preparing my speeches. I don’t really practice until a week before and even then, I still get bogged down with life. I think I’m going to give this speech again at Laurel Highlands on August 12. If there’s room on the schedule, I may also speak on it at the Johnstown Toastmasters meeting, when I visit them in October during my week off. I’m also considering a re-read of “Who Moved My Cheese” this Fall. 

For Table Topics, we answered questions from another book, “How to Make Friends and Influence People” by Dale Carnegie. In the business meeting, we discussed the use of a laptop which will be paid for with funds from the club treasury, and set a date for our officers’ meeting. It will be after our first meeting in August. 

Moving from Toastmasters to other news, I recently learned that the Shop’n Save in Penn Hills will be closing after 34 years. This location served the community of Penn Hills,as well as Plum. The owners will now focus on their other store, located along PA 286 in the Holiday Park Shopping Center in Plum. 

Obscure as this sounds, these two stores were some of the last inventories I’d perform working for WIS. It was just after the merger with RGIS and right before I got hired by Giant Eagle. I ushered in the short-lived era working in the traditional division for that district. I tried to make it work, but like everything else in my life in 2021, the handwriting was on the wall. 

Finally, getting into my reading for the week  as my focus is on the former First Family. I’m getting to the halfway point on both reads now and making good on my promise to finish “A Promised Land”. Reading a few chapters a week, I’d like to have both that and “Becoming” done by the end of August. I may push my timetable to finish the former President’s book to the early part of September. By next week I should at 50% or better on both, so I want to fit in the photo books as well. Those are “Obama: An Intimate Portrait” and “Michelle Obama: A Photographic Journey”, both of which (as well as “Becoming”) I got in 2018. The former president’s photo book was a Christmas present from my parents. 

Re-reading “Becoming” has proved successful. Feeling more motivated now, I will also get “A Promised Land” done. I’m looking forward to starting Tina Knowles’ “Matriarch” this Fall.