The Ugly Phase - Trisha Gee
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Musing
The Ugly Phase
4 July 2026<br>11 min read<br>Trisha Gee
My husband and I have found a new way to get through tough times (and I don't just mean relationship-wise!). It's about recognising the Ugly Phase and learning to accept it.
Let me explain what the Ugly Phase is. To do that, I need to tell you how Isra (my husband) discovered it. Bear with me.
For 15 years, I've been creating presentations to give at conferences. I love this, I love exploring topics to create a new talk, and I love having new content to present. However, the process of creating the new talk itself is... Not always fun. My process is:
Jot down ideas for new talks when they pop into my head
When I've given my current talks enough times at the usual conferences, I decide it's time to submit a new one
I create the new talk abstract about 3 hours before the CFP deadline (sorry about that conference organisers), treading a careful line between adding enough context that the program committee can decide if they want the talk, whilst keeping it abstract enough that there's flexibility to evolve the talk when I actually write it
Submit the talk to whichever conferences are happening in the future that I want to go to
Wait
Get accepted to give the talk (hopefully)
Wait (well not really wait - get on with the many other bits and pieces that make up the day job and also the rest of my life as wife, mother, and human)
Realise the conference is 2 weeks away and that I need to write the talk
Drop everything, block out my calendar, and start working on the outline, the ideas, grabbing quotes from relevant places, and throwing things together into a slide deck
Sometimes, if there's time, there's a lovely procrastination phase where I decide what the new slide templates should look like. This is a luxury and I often have to stop myself from doing this.
Usually "version" my slide decks about 5-8 times (create a copy of what I've done and tear it to pieces to create a new version)
Around about 70% of the way into the time available (about 2-3 days before I'm due to fly) when I'm on around version 3-5, I hate the talk. Absolutely hate it. Can't remember what point I was trying to make; can't understand what I'm trying to say with my slides; don't know why I think giving presentations is fun; don't see the point of any of it.
Cry all over my husband.
Resist the urge to start over
Force myself to sit down, work out what the central theme is, then refine the slides to get there. This usually requires me to delete around 20% of the slides. If you follow me on Twitter, you're familiar with this phase.
Do a couple of run throughs to see if it makes narrative sense, usually by myself, often on the plane to the conference.
Travel to the conference
Hang out with interesting people
Give the talk
Sigh of relief - people seemed to like it! Or at least learn something.
Step 12 is the Ugly Phase. Not all of these steps apply to every new talk. But the Ugly Phase happens Every Time. Isra pointed it out to me really recently - I've been giving presentations for 15 years, and it's only a year or two ago that he pointed out I always hate my talk and I always come out of the other side of this with a talk I'm comfortable presenting.
Since we discovered the Ugly Phase, he has had to remind me several time "this is the Ugly Phase". It's normal. You hate the talk, and you're unhappy, but you will put in the work and you'll come out of the other side. You always hate the talk. And you always get there in the end.
This has been ENORMOUSLY helpful. It doesn't make the Ugly Phase go away. If anything, it allows you to lean into it: "Oh yeah, the talk sucks, and I have many doubts, and I'm probably running out of time". But what it does is stops me meta-spiraling on top of the "The talk sucks, I hate it, I wish I'd never submitted, is it too late to pull out, will everyone hate the talk too, why am I a developer advocate, I've just been lucky so far, I'm a fraud, I can't do this, I suck..." etc etc. Embracing the Ugly Phase means I'm allowed to hate the talk. I'm expected to hate the talk. It's part of the process. The talk sucks right now, and I'm not in a great place right now, but This Too Shall Pass. Getting rid of the extra emotional toil of "and you suck and you should never have agreed to this" frees up a surprising amount of emotional energy to ride out the Ugly Phase.
One of the surprising things about the Ugly Phase is that you forget it. You forget it ever happened. I have experienced this with every talk I've written (which is a lot of talks), and I didn't even notice until Isra pointed it out to me. Even after identifying it, I need him to point it out. It's like childbirth. You really do forget the pain of childbirth when you're through it - you conceptually remember there was pain, but it's only when you do it a second time you're like "oh yeah, I forgot this really hurts". The Ugly Phase is...