I have been endeavoring to clean up two big file drawers full of speech material. Gosh I love some of that stuff. I must have a hundred hours of speech material in that drawer and I believe I could do at least five hours of speaking with just one or two word notes. I know one speaker who conducted a twenty-five year speaking career with just one talk. He never changed it. It was one of the finest presentations I’ve ever heard. My goal at every talk was to include at least one bit of new material. It might just be a bit or humor or it might be a seven minute vignette. I would try to make the new material compete with what I was doing and that way I would always be attentive to what I was presenting. I figured that if I got bored then the audience would too. With this new Almost Andy approach hardly a day passes that I’m not here at the computer working on a new bit. Sometimes it is just taking some of my well used material and endeavoring to put an Almost Andy twist to it. I know, experts tell you to zero in on one thing. Focus. Focus. Still I have always given myself the freedom to keep on exploring. So far I have only thrown out about one file and there must be a couple of hundred to go. Trouble is, I take out a file and I’m lost for hours just recalling the great stuff and sometimes I think I would like to walk onstage and do some of that material once again. How will I make out with this project? Who cares, I just might find some great stuff tomorrow and discover a way to put an Almost Andy twist to it. The challenge goes on and I love it. – Art Fettig
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