A lot can change in a week. Just 5 days ago, I was happily in a role I had had for a full year (which is actually surprising for me in my 4.5-year tenure at this startup) and had no intention of changing anything. Now it's Saturday morning and I'm waking up at the crack of dawn because I can't sleep from excitement for a new role I'll be taking. Or maybe it's stress. Sometimes it's hard to tell the difference between the two.

This is a piece I prepared for my first Toastmasters speech, presented at the HubSpot Chapter of Toastmasters last week. It was surprisingly tough to talk about myself for a full 7 minutes - both when I was writing the speech as well as delivering it. One of the interesting comments I got from my evaluator is that it was a very intimate, personal speech, which I realize is my way of sharing stories generally, especially on my blog. So here you go, blog readers, my first Toastmasters "Ice Breaker" speech!

It's been a while since I've blogged and, while I have an excuse, it's not a particularly good one. There have been a lot of changes going on at work (it's our constant state) and I've taken on a new role. Two months into the new role, I'm at a familiar point and looking back at the fun and excitement that is Beginning.

Only people who work harder to achieve their goals. I'm lucky in that my parents drilled this into me as I was growing up. Maybe not in these words, but they refused to believe that I couldn't do something. And it's not just because I was their darling little girl.

I've been thinking a lot lately about winning (no, not the Charlie Sheen-esque #winning). I've never really been into winning competitions (as my last post touches on) - I didn't play team sports as a kid (what, you didn't peg me as the quiet artsy musical kid?) and generally didn't participate in a lot of competitions. Oddly enough, though, I've recently entered into a competition at work that I'm very much getting into: the mixed doubles foosball tournament. Thanks to my teammate, I've been working on my foosball skills and now, I must say, we are quite the formidable team. I've been practicing and loving the games and can't wait to kick some foosball butt.

When I was learning to drive, I had the problem that I drove too close to the right side of the road. Or maybe it was the left. It changed, depending on my point of comparison. Meaning, I was driving in relation to the lines on the road. This frequently resulted in me doing a little offroading or getting too close to the cars in the opposite lane.

This weekend marks the start of the year 5770. Tonight we celebrate Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year - also my favorite holiday.

I love this joke from comedian Mike Birbiglia:

I love Twitter for a lot of reasons. One is that I get great links to articles and stories and all sorts of interesting things to read and think about. That's exactly what happened to me today, when I was checking out some of my new followers.

This is only my second blogger meme (read my first and this one too), so I'm still pretty excited about these things. In particular, this meme.