(EPILOGUE) In Which the Author Assesses Her Tale

"ASSESSES" LOOKS LIKE A FAKE WORD. 
There's an excessive amount of s's. But it's fine. It's having a good time.
Speaking of good times, let's talk about that TED talk.

aha

Let's try to stay within a reasonable word count! Well, there was a moment of confusion in the beginning because I have no idea what technology is, huge shoutout to my good aunts/moms Kyla and Allison, and also Kyla clicking the play button on the video because honestly I was prepared to leap off the stage (then maybe Alex would be happy) if that video didn't work. That video was also kind of embarrassing, maybe I should have just shown a clip of the instrumental because that's the part that matters and who cares about the singing....

Alright, let's assess this with the TED Commandments! 

wait i never took the time to read what's actually written on there it's so funny omg

(1) Dream big.

I guess with this one I tried to go with a really Memorable™ talk, and I hope I achieved that goal in a way. I think that went okay, especially when 83 people (okay it was like 6 and half of them were obligated to) told me they really liked..it? Woot.

(2) Show us the real you.

Okay, OOF. That was definitely...like...my entire talk? I basically Exposed myself and kind of told everyone my biggest insecurity so you could even say I never showed the Real Me up until this point. I spoke about those Passions and Dreams and Issues and I think even I would give myself 100 in this category.

(3) Make the complex plain.

Because I'm great at going overtime, I did have to shorten a bunch of paragraphs into about two sentences. I kind of brushed over the whole medical aspect, but that's also because doctors literally have no idea what's going on. When actually talking about my songs, I didn't use insane music theory terms, so I guess that's good? 

(4) Connect with people's emotions.

Thanks for laughing at my humor, dudes. I guess the Tragic Backstory could have been trying to tear at people's heartstrings, but I'm not gonna ask if anyone cried. I don't think there's any reason to.

(5) Don't flaunt your ego.

Difficult to do when you're constantly insulting yourself.

(6) No selling from the stage!

I'M SORRY MCDANIELS

(7) Feel free to comment on other speakers' talks!

Well, that was difficult to do when I missed nearly all the talks so far, so I couldn't talk about them in my talk. Er...if you mean asking questions after people's talks I didn't do much of that either so...

(8) Don't read your talk.

H*CK YEAH GUESS WHO DIDN'T EVEN HAVE NOTECARDS? THIS MAN!! Notecards are personally really bad for me, so that wasn't an issue.

(9) End your talk on time.

I pace around my room at 1:00 am, having recited my talk for like two hours. For the first hour it kept going about six minutes. I'm not sure how I managed to lessen it down by a minute, but fluency is a great thing. So I was very much Fear on whether my talk would go overtime. I'm not sure if it did, but it's actually a distinct possibility. WHOOPS.

(10) Rehearse your talk.

We're gonna ignore the friend part, because I have no friends (NO IT'S BECAUSE FBLA WAS NOT AT A VERY CONVENIENT TIME SO I COULDN'T MEET UP WITH sQUad). But I rehearsed a lot...alone. In my room. In front of the mirror. I had also sometimes mouthed it to myself in the hotel room late at night, and then one time I had an epiphany at 2am and changed something in my script and then dropped my phone and my roommates probably wanted to smite me.

♭ ♮ ♯

Welp, I feel really relieved now! The entire thing is over, and honestly I'm already forgetting parts of how my talk went. I guess my brain is already blocking the memory. That was the....wildest thing I've ever done. I've never even Exposed myself to any of my closest friends except like Two. And here I am practically coming out to the whole block. And I've kept up that ~ruse of normality~ for so long because the last thing I wanted was for others to treat me differently because of this unfortunate situation. But really, when I consider this project, I'm most proud of myself because I was able to surpass this obstacle that is my entire arm. 

Alright, if for some reason you're reading my TED talk reflection without even seeing...the...talk...then I guess I'll just attach the script on here somewhere so you can read it. Maybe later. I gotta do that math homework.

UPDATE: HERE IT IS

♭ ♮ ♯

Wait, but guys, it seems almost as if I have forgotten about that

I wish. 

Some random channel commented "dope!" on my final video, but upon closer inspection it might be spam (I didn't even know YouTube had spam whom is she) so I guess I'm not actually a YouTube star (thanks to all two of my subscribers). But let me examine my three songs. Unfortunately, it seems that I literally peaked at the first song because I had the most time.  And I decided to try and take more risks in my second song. I made the instrumental less repetitive but that made it weird and I was not a fan. And then, as some of you probably know, I had -2 hours to write my third song because the apocalypse was happening in the form of FBLA. 

Here's the conundrum with me writing songs: It's extremely time consuming, but it's also best done in one sitting. Do you see the problem? All three songs were basically finished in one sitting, except maybe the lyrics could be done another day. But it's so annoying to not do it continuously because I might forget something I was going to put in or something like that. And since I'm Not A Fan of transcribing as I go (I'm lazy), I kind of just have to....Remember it. Yeah, it's certainly a time. I'm a professional. 

I think that's the best explanation I can give for my actual decrease in quality. But I think my final product is still like...a Final Product. I really did manage to combine all three melodies and try making them meaningful. I had some fun with chords. Really, you can still see my improvement from the Very Beginning. It looks like this:

would justin j approve of my curves

At first, I was Nothing. Then I peaked in my first song and went steadily downward. But my Final Product was still Something.

Accomplishments!

I think I really did have a Good Time, so now the question is will I continue?

I believe I mentioned Very Briefly before that the whole reason I chose this project was because I currently had a song in progress. I wanted to learn how to write instrumental for that song, which was based on a story I was writing. So there was a whole reason I was writing songs for a story! Obviously, first course of action would be to finish that song. And then I want to write more songs for that story. I mean, okay, maybe I should also finish the story, but that's what NaNoWriMo is for! 

Okay, whoops. "Reasonable wordcount" WHOM?

I should go now, so here's a cool quote:

See you on the other side of the war (shut up I don't care the project is over the grind never stops)~

P.S: FROM THE SOUNDS OF IT NOT MANY PEOPLE ACTUALLY CLICKED ON THE LINKS ON THE SLIDESHOW AT THE TOP OF THE PAGE YOU SHOULD 110% DO THAT I SWEAR I'M NOT RICKROLLING YOU
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Commented on Olivia, Jasmine, Amanda, and Ellie (A)'s blogs