Daniel Greene

Tag: Phoenix

  • The dilemma of self-promotion

    Tonight, after posting the participant’s review of my workshop this morning, I see that there are no comments on the blog post and no “Likes” or comments on the Facebook post. My first thought is “people thought it was obnoxious.” Self-promotion can be a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t proposition. You want to win people over, but you risk turning them off in the process. I don’t know if I ever strike the right balance when it comes to talking about my accomplishments or promoting my work. Lately, I fear that some of my status updates have been boldface brags; e.g., “New blog post: Rave Review for my Vague Language Workshop http://bit.ly/zWrno” (tweet), “I’m happy that 24 people came to my workshop in Phoenix, five of them all the way from Yuma and four of them all the way from Tucson.” (tweet), and “New blog post: Speak & Spell II a Successful Workshop http://bit.ly/171bC9” (tweet), especially the fact that I shared my teacher evaluation scores. Ugh.

    What may or may not be apparent is that I have felt shame and failure in my life, and there have been a few times I doubted I’d ever achieve anything. When I do manage to do something good, my feelings of past failure and inefficacy drive me to shout my achievements from the rooftops. “See! I’m not a complete failure! I DID something!”

    Perhaps it is the fact that there have been so many times in my life when I have felt paralyzed into inaction. I’ve wanted to do many things that I didn’t do because I didn’t believe in myself. Now, when I finally do things that I’ve only been dreaming of doing for years, I feel… well… vindicated! Especially when other people didn’t believe in me, either. It’s like, “How do you like me now?!” Well, maybe not very much, I fear.

    What good does it do to shove my success in the faces of people who doubted me? Are they really going to “like me now”? Or are they just going to resent me for rubbing it in their faces that I succeeded in spite of them? My fear is that they are going to resent me as much as I resent them. Resentment begets resentment. The thing to do is forgive everyone for everything, starting with myself.

    (more…)

  • Nature tints the morning sepia

    As I lay in bed early this morning, I heard thunder, saw the occasional flash of lightning, and then saw the color of the sky change into a natural sepia tone. It was such a phenonmenon that I got out of bed early, turned off the house alarm, got my camera, and went outside to capture the moment.

  • Interpreted my first Shakespeare play!

    A lot has happened since I last wrote a blog post, but this post is about how I interpreted my first Shakespeare play.

    I had been preparing to interpret The Merchant of Venice for the Southwest Shakespeare Company at the Mesa Arts Center since early March, but after I presented my workshop at the Arizona RID State Conference at the end of March, I got to work on Merchant in ernest.

    My co-interpreter, Sandra Solomon, who had already interpreted four shows for SW Shakespeare Co., met with me several times to rehearse interpreting the show. We corresponded with Missy Keast, our ASL Producer, via e-mail and met with her over videoconference to show her some of our interpreting and get her feedback, which was very beneficial. (Sandra came to my house and we sat together in front of my iMac with built-in iSight camera and used iChat to connect to Missy in Hawaii, since she also has a Mac with built in iSight and iChat. I only wish we’d been able to do this more than once.)

    In addition to meeting a few times at each other’s homes to discuss the play and rehearse, (more…)

  • After my first conference workshop

    I presented my workshop "Knowing What They’re Going to Say Before They Say It: Using Genre Recognition to Improve Your Predictive Skills" at the Arizona RID (Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf) State Conference on Saturday, March 28, 2009 from 1-4:30 PM. It was the first time I’d ever presented at a state conference, and they put me in the smallest meeting room (the Palo Verde room) at the Hilton Airport Hotel in Phoenix, Arizona.

    Can you believe that a total of 27 attendees filled this room beyond capacity? I was astounded at the turnout. I was too busy during my workshop to even think about taking pictures, but as I was leaving the space after packing up all my things, I paused to say a prayer of thanks; then I took this photo to commemorate the moment. I am hopeful to teach workshops at other conferences throughout the rest of my life. It may sound corny, (more…)

  • Tweetup meal w/ Gary Millard & Sheila Bocchine

    I took part in an interesting phenomenon today. I was riding the light rail home from work when I checked Twitter using Twidroid on my T-Mobile G1 with Google. An update suddenly appeared from Sheila Bocchine (sheilabocchine on Twitter and daisyjellybean on Flickr) that read, “I have all the necessary paperwork for my visa complete!! Yay!! Now for lunch at Mrs. White’s Golden Rule Cafe!!”

    I’ve wanted to try Mrs. White’s Golden Rule Cafe for a couple of years now, and I’ve seen it many times lately while passing it on the eastbound train on Jefferson at 8th Street. I just happened to be on Washington and 24th Street when I read her latest tweet, so I was only blocks away from the restaurant. I sent her a direct message saying, “Like company for lunch? I’m on the Metro in that direction right now! =)”. I didn’t hear back right away, so I sent another, “I am at 12th st & Washington right now”, and finally, “I got off the train. If now’s not a good time, I can get the next one.” Luckily, I got a direct message from her as I stood on the station platform that said, (more…)