It’s 7:30 a.m. on a Friday morning, and in a few hours I’ll be speaking to the Napa Valley Chamber of Commerce. They booked me to speak on Free and Low-Cost Tools Small Businesses Can’t Live Without, based on the cool free tools I collect for The Cheapskate Freelancer.

Man but I love this stuff. I love standing in front of a crowd of people and making them laugh. I love when people line up after a session to give me their cards. I love sharing ideas that help people do their jobs better. And I love the energy I receive from the efforts.

The pressure’s on, though. When I’m invited to speak, it’s usually because someone’s seen me somewhere else, and I made them laugh and enlightened them at the same time. Thus, each presentation is a performance, and each performance has to be as good or better than the last.

When I’m writing, it’s easier to have a mediocre day. If I’m writing something and just not feeling it, I can usually switch gears for a while until I’m sharp again. And if I’ve got a upset belly or a new pimple or really bad hair, who cares? I can still perform as a writer, alone in my little (new, WONDERFUL) office a block from the ocean. Or I can take a walk and get rejuvenated. The timing is mine and the output doesn’t have to be 110 percent.

But there’s a bigger obligation to a live audience. I need to be ON — Super ON — at 12:30 p.m. in the Grand Ballroom. I need to have perfect clothes, great shoes, passable hair, an energetic personality and the ability to think on my feet. Each time I commit to a speaking engagement, I worry that my timing will be off, that today won’t be a great day. But, so far, every day has rocked. I leave each presentation more pumped than when I started.

My next speaking gig after this is Orlando the first week in November. I was hired to do the same 45-minute presentation four days in a row for small business owners in the diving industry. And after that I’m going to the Fancy Food Show in San Francisco to speak to more small business owners. I plan to keep growing this side of my business, so I can continue to gather and exude the energy of the live events.

As I used to have posted on my wall: Today is a Great Day to be Amazing.

About 2 years ago, I attended a workshop on how to write electronic newsletters. I exchanged cards with a guy I’ll call Paul because I can’t really remember his name.

We actually corresponded a couple of times in the first month after we met, but I really don’t know Paul. I don’t need to buy anything from Paul. None of the people I know need to buy anything from Paul. But I’ve been getting Paul’s electronic newsletters about once a month for 2 years. And, in today’s world of furious networking, I feel obliged to keep getting Paul’s newsletter. I fear that if I sever the connection to Paul by unsubscribing from his newsletter, I’ll make Paul feel bad, or I’ll miss the opportunity of a lifetime because I no longer have his contact number to make an important connection for my business.

I’ve gotten to the point where his email (which just arrived) in my inbox makes me wince. I haven’t opened one of them in at least 20 editions. They just sit there and make me feel guilty for hating them. Perhaps you have to have grown up in a Catholic family to understand my guilt, but I hope you get the point.

The same goes for other vague connections I’ve made. I receive invitations to become a fan on Facebook for a company whose owner I met once. I get requests to contribute to fundraising for causes I don’t necessarily want to support, sent by people I’ve corresponded with a half dozen times. And I feel an obligation to keep all my connections, to support all efforts by independent people with gumption — because wouldn’t it be great if they supported me?

Is that what social networking today has led to? We’re all running around trying to scratch backs with hopes that we’ll have our backs scratched when we need it. Are we all afraid of losing the ability to be an important spoke in an important hub, so we stretch our network as far as the eye can see and never “defriend” anyone because we may need them later? Or is it just me?

I even feel uncomfortable writing this blog post. What if Paul reads it and recognizes himself? What if a casual connection feels slighted and doubts that I’m a real friend? And a bigger question…. how can I (we) expect to be real friends with everybody? I have 224 connections on LinkedIn, 1907 followers on Twitter and 179 Facebook friends, and I’d consider myself a moderately successful networker. Is this really all necessary to live, work, date and play in today’s society?

(Err… PS — feel free to reach out to me on any of the three networks — the more the merrier at this point, right?)