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So I’ve been speaking professionally for basically half a century now and I just woke up with a conference anxiety dream.

This time, I’m doing the closing keynote at some large festival-like event and there’s a talk right before mine.

The conference organiser (who is this Turkish guy who seems genuinely happy I’m there but also entirely overwhelmed) assures me we’ll have time to set up between talks (that alone is my nightmare, I like to have everything set up and leave it there to limit what can wrong).

Anyway, long nightmare short, the penultimate talk ends, I’m next to the organiser behind a long crowd of people, and he just starts yelling out to introduce me “And the next speaker… Aral Balkan!” I’m looking at him like “what the fuck?” He’s like “don’t worry, you got this”. That’s when I realise not only is nothing set up but that I have no idea where my bag is with my laptop. So I start frantically searching a maze-like backstage for it as the clock ticks and expectation builds and then I wake up.

And I don’t even have a fucking talk coming up!

Yeah, so, good morning… How’s your day going so far? :)