Speechwriter's Conference brings 230 of
my best friends to Washington, D.C.

It's an unfortunate reality that I spend the vast majority of the year limited to phone conversations and e-mails with speechwriters.

Except for three days in February, when I'm surrounded by a couple hundred of them at the conference.

With whom I try to hold coherent conversations.

While trying to ascertain whether that's a look of confidence or blissful ignorance on the face of the 18-year-old hotel AV staffer who's running the soundboard.

It's always a fun week. The speechwriters tell me they are joyful預stonished, really葉o have a conference dedicated just for them. And I tell them I'm joyful and astonished they've come.

It's always an unsettling week. I finally meet people I've been corresponding with on e-mail for years and find myself so ruffled by the look in their eye that says I don't look anything like they imagined, that I can't remember how I imagined them.

It's always an exhausting week. Every year I tell myself I'm going to go to bed early each night so that I feel my very best during the day. Every year, it's midnight on Thursday in the Mayflower's lobby bar and we're saying: "One more and we gotta go."

It's always an incredibly stimulating week. Like most attenders, I scribble notes like crazy, too, and leave with a fat notebook and ideas coming out of my ears.

And I never sleep more soundly than I do on the two-and-a-half hour flight back to Chicago.

I'm looking forward to seeing you there.