Archives for April 2012

Well,  April 17th is winding down to a close, and for the second year in my life, I mark this day, not because it’s my birthday or a major life occasion, but rather because today marks the day that I wrote a riveting post called “So I’m repurposing my blog.” A blog I had established to just be craft pictures would now be my personal blog site, except it was called Ladybug Notes, it was at blogger, and I blogged as “The Real Life Madman.”

But I digress.

Last year at this time, I thought I had things pretty well figured out. As is so often the case in the online world and in the offline world, the more you think you have things figured out, the less you know. I am happy to say that at this point in time, I am thoroughly confused. I take great comfort in that!

There is one thing I said a year ago that I happily still agree with, and that is that a blog really doesn’t get very far if people aren’t reading it, commenting on it, and sharing it. A blog without people beyond the blogger is not really a blog. It’s a diary. It’s a monoblog.

I’ve made it this far in the world of social media because I have been immensely fortunate to meet wonderful people, and those wonderful people have helped me in ways they might not even realize. So instead of me trying to tell you how you can make it to a two-year mark on your blog or instead of me pretending I have a super secret way to do this that or the other thing, I want to tell you about some of the people I know who keep me going. Maybe you know people who fill some of these roles for you. I do think that having people in these roles is important, but maybe that’s just for me. Anyway…here we go 🙂

The Sounding Boards

You have to have people you can rant and rave to behind the scenes. Because sometimes things happen in the online world that just drive you batty, and often it’s best understood by other folks who share that space. I have been fortunate to be able to bend the ear of amazing people like Sherree Worrell, Jeannette Baer, Stanford Smith, and Mark Schaefer. These folks are understanding but they can also kick me in the butt and tell me to keep going. That’s important in this space.

The Coaches

The online world is a lot like a complex game. Finding a person who can offer you guidance along the way REALLY helps. I have been fortunate to receive coaching from some pretty amazing people, including Geoff Livingston, Maya Paveza, Chris Brogan, and Jay Baer. All of these folks have at various times given me insight that helped me look at things in a new way or that helped me shift my goals to something more…attainable (or logical).

The Role Models

Of course, like in anything, it’s important to surround yourself with people who drive you nuts because they are, in some way, so far ahead of you. Otherwise you have nothing realistic to strive for, right? I have a LOT of role models and I am not at all ashamed to admit that they kick my butt in various and sundry ways. I will probably never be as smart, community-oriented, and as gifted as Gini Dietrich. I will never be able to write as brilliantly as Olivier Blanchard or Amber Naslund. I will never be able to filter complex concepts into easy-to-understand advice like Marcus Sheridan. I will never be able to inspire people like Julien Smith. And that’s okay. I’m cool with that. These folks give me something to shoot for, and their abilities/capabilities keep me humble. Humility is important online too, regardless of what you might have heard.

The net

It’s very important to have people that you know will always (and I mean always) have your back. Let’s face it, sometimes the online world can get ugly. Sometimes you can feel defeated. Sometimes you just get darned tired of the whole game. I’ve been immensely fortunate to weave a great support net over the last two years. People like Jill Manty, Danny Garcia, Sean McGinnis, Sam Fiorella, Raúl Colon, Brandie McCallum, Ellen Bremen, Lee Carey,  Cheryl Burgess, Aimee Lucas, Nancy Davis, Martina McGowan, Marsha Collier, Jure Klepic – these folks seem to never run out of support for me. I don’t know how I got so lucky, but lucky I am. Social Media is often executed alone, but a team can really REALLY help.

People who make you smile

Beyond all of that serious stuff, it’s important to me, as I sit here in my toddler years of social media, to have people around who make you smile. People like Susan Fox, Susie Parker, Claudia Scimeca, Kaarina Dillabough, Bill Dorman, Jack Steiner…well the list goes on and on. But I know pretty much without fail that when I sign into one of my social media realities, I’m going to end up with a stupid smile plastered across my face at some point. Social Media can take itself too seriously. Don’t let yourself go down that rabbit hole!

So there you have it. That is what has worked for me. And by worked I mean that is what has kept me content with my online reality for two years now.

It’s all about the people, stupid 🙂 And I know some terrific people.

Thanks for hanging with me on this journey. Cheers to another year!

Image Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/cobalt/108156451 via Creative Commons

I was going through some old photos the other day and came upon a picture that made me do a double take. It was a picture of me about 10 years ago, probably, and I was really overweight (in a masterful twist of fate, the picture shows me standing with my fridge door open – go fig). The main thing that struck me was just how incredibly overweight I was. In part, it struck me because of how far I’ve come -I can definitely tell the difference – but there’s also the inexplicable fact that at the time, I had no idea I had gained so much weight.

How can that be, you might well ask. I am not really sure. I knew that I wasn’t doing a lot to help myself out. Long hours in grad school and a very nearby coffee shop that served cafe mochas were part of the problem. I didn’t exercise – walking was a pretty big deal for me back then (as in, “I walked, therefore I can have more bad food”). But I didn’t really see that I was getting out of control.

I find that rather worrisome. But I think this happens to everybody in one way or another. Some people might gain a lot of weight. Some people might go within themselves and stop reaching out to people. Some people might hurt themselves. Sometimes, when you get really stuck in your own head, the world can become very small and every event can become very very large. It’s easy to lose track of how many cookies you’ve had or how long it’s been since you’ve eaten.

Recover and forgive yourself

It would be really easy for me to look back at the person I was 10 years ago and be furious. “Why did you eat at Wendy’s so much?” “Why didn’t you exercise when your big plans for the day included “take 30-minute nap?” I could go on and on. I could be really hard on the me of a decade ago. But in the end, looking back and yelling at our old selves doesn’t really make us feel better about ourselves today. Really, it’s picking the scab off of the old wounds that brought us to that point.

There was a lot going on with me ten years ago. Academically, health-wise, life-wise…it was a tough time. I had a $10 budget for grocery shopping every week for awhile there. So, while I could have made better choices, and while I know those better choices *now,* I have to cut myself some slack. I have to remember what it was like to be that person at that time, and I have to realize how much I’ve changed.

I bet if you are thinking about a time when you weren’t happy with yourself, or if you aren’t happy with yourself now, that you could find reasons to forgive yourself. Understand, this is not the same as making excuses. Bad decisions are bad decisions. But sometimes life gives us a little more than we are comfortable with and we need to learn to walk and breathe and live and shift with that new burden that can be so hard to wrap our arms around.

Take hope

If you are not happy with yourself now, as I was not too happy ten years ago, take heart. Take hope. Ten years later, I am still not where I want to be, but boy am I working hard. Every day I try to make a move to get myself to that place I’m shooting for. Some days are more victorious than others, but I keep plowing ahead. I keep taking pictures in the now, and they wipe out that picture from the past. If I can do that, I know you can too.

The first step is to not beat yourself up. The second step is to forgive yourself. And the third step – the third step is to start working the problem. Seek help. Be honest with yourself. Try to take a baby step every day moving forward.

In retrospect, I’m glad I found that picture. It is good to remember where you’ve come from just as it’s good to remember where you’re going.

Don’t lose track of where you’re going. Don’t lose hope. And don’t give up.

Image Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/kalexanderson/5421517469/ via Creative Commons

When I was in, oh, I guess about eighth grade, my language arts class went through a real Greek Tragedy period (great for pre-pubescent kids, right?). We read Oedipus and Antigone and all those great gory Greek stories with people popping their eyes out and missing riddles and signs and all that jazz. One of the words that kept coming up (because in eighth grade you can’t learn a word just once) was hubris. It was pretty much the undoing of every character that got undone. “Blinded by the Pride” might have been a huge hit single during this time period.

Of course, philosophers have mused about hubris for as long as they’ve been philosophizing. Where is the line between confidence and arrogance? Where is the line between proven accomplishments and well, hubris?

The unsinkable ship

Today marks the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic. The real Titanic, not the one that Leo and Cate were on. In a lot of ways, the Titanic was a sort of a 20th century Tower of Babel. It was going to be the biggest. It was going to be indestructible. And even a few classes of society were going to be sort of almost mixed together on this sailing island of paradise. The builders in Belfast and the White Star Line cruise company were over the top with pride. Of course, this proved to be not only their undoing but the undoing of 1,500 people. The Tower of Babel turned out to be more like the explosion of the two towers on 9/11. Nothing proved to be unsinkable. Except human pride, of course.

James Cameron’s “final word”

As part of the Titanic anniversary, National Geographic has been airing a show titled something along the lines of “The Titanic: James Cameron’s final word.” The concept of the show is pretty interesting on the surface. Cameron has gathered all sorts of historical and naval experts to try to piece together exactly how the Titanic split in two and sank to the sea. Why is the stern folded over like a taco and facing the opposite direction from the bow? Why is that boiler way over there? Neat stuff like that. But almost from the beginning, Cameron seems to be a man marked by hubris. First, he notes that in order to make his film, he went on down to “dive the crash site,” as if this is something just any ole person could do. But throughout the show, you see Cameron arguing science and naval history with people who have dedicated their careers to this, and you realize too that Cameron is not REALLY trying to solve the mystery of the ship’s demise. He’s trying to figure out just how accurate his movie was. There’s a little scene from the shooting of his movie where someone tells him something should be shifted to make it more realistic and Cameron quips, “Yeah, well, I’m going to keep it that way so my movie is actually dramatic.”

Hubris. Yucky every time.

As I reported these observations to my Facebook friends and while I was agonizing over whether Cameron should be admired or criticized, a buddy of mine said, “I think maybe his butt has been kissed too much.” I think that’s probably pretty accurate. Then I got to thinking, “I wonder if that’s the case in the online world too.”

The construction of online hubris

I’ve been helping out a new blogger here and there and it’s funny to watch the process that I went through via this prism of another person’s experience. This person is monitoring their traffic every day, practically, just like I did. When they get a comment they are so excited. Sometimes they report their traffic doubled from the day before. “I could get used to that!” They tell me.

Indeed.

It’s pretty hard not to feel like you’re getting your butt kissed here in the online world. You have pictures of yourself plastered all over the place. All of these sites ask you what’s on your mind. Look at this site here. I can write some words and then people not only respond, but they share it! Holy smokes. One can get a big head pretty quickly that way.

Is your butt getting kissed too much?

I think perhaps some people get a little too carried away with it. For example, I feel sometimes like people with big followings on Twitter feel like just mentioning someone is a great act of charity. After all, them saying your name means some 500,000 people are seeing your name, right? I always picture the recipient tweeter bowing down and saying, “Oh…thank you for mentioning me! Thank you!”

It’s kind of creepy.

I find myself wondering if this is why a lot of people online end up talking or writing about things that they really don’t know, just like James Cameron trying to explain history to two different historians (“I mean, that is history, right?”). If you’re not an experienced marketer, why are you talking about marketing as if you’re an expert? If you don’t know much about how to motivate others, why are you calling yourself a life coach?

How can online hubris lead to your undoing? You can end up saying something really wrong and you can get called on it. You can discover that maybe people don’t REALLY think you’re so great. Your belief that you are now above basic human manners can result in you losing touch with people who really did think you were neat. It can backfire in all sorts of ways (though hopefully not in the eye-poking sort of way).

Having big online followings can be a lot of fun. It can be an ego boost. But all I have to do is mention some big accomplishment of mine to a friend not involved in this world to get myself grounded again. I can’t tell if it’s the puzzled deer in the headlights kind of look or the rolling of the eyes, but I just get the sense that most people simply do. not. care. You should remember that too, as you roll along in this heady online world. You are not unsinkable. Hubris can really weigh you down. That’s a combination to be wary of.

Image Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/toolmantim/3202458687/ via Creative Commons

I was poking around YouTube the other day trying to find a film Jim Henson had done before he became famous for his muppets (you’d probably never guess it was the same guy if you didn’t know his background). Instead of finding that, I found something entirely different and unexpected, as so often happens when you are innocently surfing the web. I found Frank Oz’s eulogy of Jim Henson from Henson’s funeral.

It’s worth a watch – it’s perhaps the most amazing eulogy I’ve ever seen. What I like about it is that Oz bases his words around one simple act that Jim Henson did – a gift that Jim put together for Frank one Christmas. But just as Jim Henson dissected the character of Bert, Frank Oz used this present to dissect the character of Jim Henson. Oz described Henson’s love of layers and detail, his excitement at giving gifts to people, his utter enjoyment in slaving away on something for someone he cared about.

Frank Oz used his eulogy to illustrate how a gift from a long time ago had shown him how much Jim Henson had loved him, and in saying that, you can tell that Frank Oz took that as the highest of honors. It’s everything a eulogy should be.

I found myself wondering though, as I listened, whether Frank Oz had ever mentioned these amazing observations to his friend. Did Jim Henson know that this gift had made such an impression? Did he know that the gift had touched Frank Oz’s heart?

Eulogies are kind of selfish

I have decided that eulogies are sort of silly. They really are not for the person who has left us. They’re for us. So often you hear people say things like, “I wish I had told that person xyz,” or “I never told that person how much I care.” You are really saying those words to lift the burden from your own soul. Which is fine. But I keep wondering if there isn’t a better way to go. I keep wondering if there’s a way, an easy way, to interweave eulogies into the land of the living.

Ew, that’s awkward!

Of course, we say things in eulogies that may not be easy to say to a person face-to-face in real life. “I really appreciate you,” “I love you,” things like that. People tend to shy away from these heartfelt sentiments cuz ya know, it makes ya look kind of mushy. A lot of foot shuffling happens. Some jokes may lighten the touch of these heavy words of gratitude. It’s just not an easy thing for us to do for some reason.

So, I keep thinking of a scene from The Wire, where a cop who is retiring has a “wake.” He is lying there in an open casket and all of his co-workers are eulogizing him, and he isn’t allowed (technically) to say anything. It got me to thinking, maybe we could introduce something like that into our poor depraved society. Maybe we could have a day where people get to say whatever they want to say to you (hopefully good) and you aren’t really allowed to respond, taking away some of that mushy pressure. I don’t know, would that make it easier?

The weight of words unspoken

One of the greatest regrets people have, either when their own life is ending or when they are losing one they love, is that they did not say everything they wanted to say. What stops us? What makes it easier after the person has gone away?

People say we live in a time of fleeting friendship. That may or may not be true, but surely now is as good a time as any to make sure that the people you do care about KNOW it. Even if it’s just a little thing,  go ahead and say it. Why wait? As Clint Eastwood might well say, “Go ahead. Make their day.”

Or am I crazy?

Image Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/striatic/3258488/ via Creative Commons