Musings

Recently, I have had the great pleasure of talking to two great people, and both conversations were recorded. The first conversation was with Jayme Soulati and it was actually recorded live at Social Slam. Jayme is awesome and I was so excited to meet her. Little did I know I would be interviewed! We ended up talking about my “prolific” Facebook posting and how I balance that with business stuff. If you’re interested, you can check that out here.

I also had the pleasure of chatting with Tim McDonald via Spreecast. Our talk was about marketing (and a little bit about people I adore online). This was a lot of fun, but hopefully you can also learn a little bit about some of our agency’s approaches to that whole marketing thing. You can check that out (if you want) here.

I hope you enjoy! Thanks very much to Jayme and Tim for being awesome hosts and great people!

Image Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/doug88888/2953428679/ via Creative Commons

I often like to think of life as divided into four units. You spend four years in high school. Four years in college (at least). I spent four years in grad school. Four seems to be a good benchmark for me.

Almost exactly 8 years ago, I left the Ivory Tower. That’s two units of four, for those of you who are counting. I was not a happy camper back in 2004. In fact, I was nearly an entirely different person from who I am now. I had two Masters degrees but having spent 6 months applying to jobs with dedication and passion, I had not even been called for an interview. I was way overweight. I had been rather battered and bruised by my graduate school experience (that’s a story for another time). I was moving back home, which I felt wretched about. And on top of all of that, I couldn’t drive.

See, when I was 16 I wanted to learn how to drive just like every teenager does, but I knew that I would need special accommodations, assuming that seeing over the windshield was important. I called a driving school and asked if they’d be able to help someone like me and I got the curt response, “Well, we have some phonebooks.” Being 16, I took this as a ravaging insult that cut deep into my poor coal black heart, so I gave up for awhile. Then I came to the conclusion that I’d need to buy a car to have it adjusted, and lord knows I didn’t have enough money for either of those things. I was 25 and still had not cracked this nut. And now I was unemployed, unhealthy, living at home, and my college loans were coming due. It was not a happy time.

And then came Wally.

My mom scoured the phonebook (yeah…those things) looking for driving instructors that catered to the “not exactly normal” driver. I decided to call Wally. He came by to pick me up at my parents’ house. He had a red Pontiac and had all sorts of stuff in the trunk of the car – pedal extenders, pillows, books – anything a special needs driver could use. I told him I was not really comfortable with anything except parking lot driving, so he said, “Ok, we’ll go to a parking lot.” After a few laps of me driving in circles, he said, “OK, now I want you to drive home.”

Boy was I scared out of my mind. But somehow, Wally was like a fear sponge. He never EVER lost his calm, even when I came close to plowing into cars. And he perpetually picked on me, as I got better. “Oh, you sure you don’t want to just go back to the parking lot?”

After about 4 months of endless driving around orange cones, driving down streets, not understanding how to do left-hand turns, and all kinds of other torturous stuff, I passed both parts of my driving test and got my license. I could drive. I could leave one place and go to another, and I could do that whenever I wanted. Well, within reason. I had my freedom. I felt like an adult. I felt more normal. It was the beginning of a new beginning.

In a lot of ways, even though not driving is not technically life threatening, Wally saved my life. He gave me a bright shining light of possibility when there wasn’t a whole lot of that going around. Every time I drive, even now, I think about that man and what he did for me. And I think about the fact that I was just one of his many, many students. I wonder how many other people feel the same way about him that I do.

Wally taught me that there are lots of ways to save a person’s life. It’s not always sudden and super dramatic. Sometimes it’s four months driving around cones in the parking lot of an abandoned ghetto grocery store in an un-air-conditioned car in the middle of the summer. Maybe it’s something entirely different but equally unexpected.

Wally taught me to drive, but he also taught me that there are ways around every obstacle. I never thought I’d be able to drive.

What do you think you can never do? Whatever it is, you’re wrong – it can be done. It might stink working towards it. You might wanna quit a lot of times, and you might even have to pay a lot of money for it. But it can be done. And that person or those people who help you – they’ll look like lifesavers to you, even if the situation didn’t seem life threatening at the time.

And you’ll wonder, as I am wondering these days, how you could ever be so lucky and how you could ever show the depth of your gratitude.

Everyone needs a Wally. I hope you find yours.

Image Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tir_na_nog/3603202134/ via Creative Commons

Back in the early Middle Ages (kind of like the eastern part of the Midwest, right?) guys figured out that if they riveted tons and tons of tiny steel rings together, they could make something called chainmail. Some of my friends in college took up the hobby of making their own chainmail, and I must say, even as an avid knitter/crocheter, it did not look like fun work. Chainmail was heavy, so heavy that it had to be made specifically so that it wouldn’t leave huge gaps and openings due to its own weight. After all, huge gaps or holes wouldn’t do a super duper job of staving off swords, lances, and other such.

Eventually, guys figured out that all of those tiny little rings were sort of a pain in the butt (and really heavy), so they created something called plate armor. This is probably what you think of when you think about knights. All shiny and metallic and protected. Chainmail was still used for those little Lever 2000 type parts *cough* but plate armor was the thing. Everything was great. The combination of chainmail and the plate armor and the swords and the spears and the lances and the horses – it was all just magnifient.

Until it wasn’t. Because, you see, gunpowder was invented. Plate armor didn’t do so hot against gunpowder. Also, dudes started realizing that running around and doing things whilst wearing a steel factory was kind of tough and tiring. Armor, as pretty and as protective as it was, was moved on down to ceremonial status.

Ouch.

Your social media armor

It’s easy to come into the online world with your own armor on. Maybe you have a sort of chainmail that you link together – a finely tuned combination of approaches, “voices,” and personas that you rivet together around your real self. Maybe you are more a plate armor kind of person. You put on something really shiny and really strong, but what you have surrounded yourself with is so thick and awkward that people can’t really figure out who you are under there.

Now, wearing a little protective armor is probably a good idea, especially for those soft and squishy parts (I was thinking “heart.” I don’t know why you’re snickering). Wearing your heart on your Twitter handle can be dangerous business. But wearing 17 layers of armor may not be such a great idea either. That can get really heavy. It can still get blown up. And it can make it super easy for people to look at you weird. Why aren’t you being more open? Why are you full of bravado all of the time? Why do you seem so angry or so indifferent all of the time?

These things put people off in the online world. They’re not going to work hard to figure you out. There are too many unarmored people to choose from.

You have to choose your priority

As is the case with so many things in life, both online and offline, you have a choice to make. You can opt to emphasize protection. You can cover up your real identity. Heck, you don’t even have to show your face in your avatars if you don’t want to. You can fool Facebook and make it think your real name is Hamburger Burglar.

The other choice on the table is to remove some of that armor and risk the possibility that someone might hurt you somehow. But in the meantime, you are more open to people. You are more willing to reach out, to learn things, to chat, to share. And let’s face it, these things all do kind of make social media a bit more enjoyable, right? I think so, anyway. You might be able to move around a bit easier. You might look a bit less shiny, but then again, there’s plenty of personality bling that can make up for that.

What it really comes down to is how you want your online presence to go.

So, is it time to put your plate armor on display? Is it time to put your chainmail under the bed? Or are you still going to suit up in the online world? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Image Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/charlestilford/3091858085/ via Creative Commons

 

When I was still a pretty little kid, I saw a show about foster kids. It must have been 20/20 or something like that. I still remember one pivotal part of the story. Kids who were around 12 years old were standing in line because people interested in adopting children were coming to visit the foster home. The kids talked about how they always wanted to give the best possible impression. They smiled as much as possible, they were as nice as possible. But because they weren’t cute little babies anymore, they knew that their chances weren’t real good. Indeed, none of the children featured on the show were adopted that day.

This is a story that is being lived out by kids all over the nation. The thing is, these kids are on a clock. If they are not adopted by the age of 21, they actually “age out” of the foster care system. With no more existing connections in the foster care system, no family, and no solid foundation to turn to, these young adults often suffer very difficult lives.

The stories of these lost children are finally being highlighted by a group called SalaamGarage NYC. This group is gathering stories and photographs for a photography exhibit, a website, and a book. The stories reveal, as the group’s kickstarter page indicates, “sobering odds.” “Nationally, 1 in 5 will become Homeless.  1 in 4 will be incarcerated within two years of aging-out.  About 1 in 2 young women will be pregnant within one year and only about half will graduate high school.”

You can help turn the tide

Thanks to the wonders of social media and modern technology, we have a chance to spread the word about the SalaamGarage project, which means we in turn have a chance to help shine the light on these stories that are too often shoved into dark corners and ignored. The project is looking for funding of just under $13,500, and we have 33 days to make that happen.

Visit the Kickstarter page. Watch the video, which does a much better job than this of explaining the plight of these young people. See if you can donate a little, or if you can’t, just help me spread the word. It’s the least we can do for these kids, don’t you think? And after all, as the project so eloquently states – Everybody needs someone.

Image Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dvs/15495574/ via Creative Commons

Have you ever heard of Hildegard von Bingen? You might have heard her called Sibyl of the Rhine. Same person. Well, here’s the thing about Hildegard/Sibyl. She was one of those people who was good at everything. Among her accomplishments, she ended up writing at least 69 musical compositions (plus verse), 3 books of visions, and many letters to all sorts of correspondents. Hildegard created her own modified Latin alphabet, gained renown as a healer (she wrote a book about how to use different medicinal herbs to treat ailments), and was a respected woman at a time when this was almost an oxymoron. Indeed, although she has not been canonized, she is such a beloved figure that she is sometimes called Saint Hildegard.

You might think, given all of these accomplishments, that Hildegard would have been a pretty confident person. Maybe even a little full of herself. I mean, if people gravitated to you to hear your advice about things ranging from medicine to mysticism, you might feel kind of happy with yourself, right? Indeed, we experience this in the online world a lot. People come to our blogs, people tweet us with questions, and it’s hard to remember that we are still just our regular ole normal selves.

In the case of Hildegard, though, the world almost did not get to benefit from her amazing contributions:

But I, though I saw and heard these things, refused to write for a long time through doubt and bad opinion and the diversity of human words, not with stubbornness but in the exercise of humility, until, laid low by the scourge of God, I fell upon a bed of sickness; then, compelled at last by many illnesses, and by the witness of a certain noble maiden of good conduct [the nun Richardis von Stade] and of that man whom I had secretly sought and found, as mentioned above, I set my hand to the writing. (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hildegard_of_Bingen).

That’s right. As talented as she was, as respected as she was, as amazing as she was, Hildegard almost did not sit down to write anything. Even though she had so much to offer, and even though it ended up that writing brought her great joy and peace of mind, she almost did not begin to write. The world almost missed out.

What are you holding back?

One of the great problems in life is that we don’t always know what we can offer until we sit down and start to *do* things. A writer does not know how good they are until they start to write. A singer cannot know how good her voice is until she opens her mouth and lets the sound come out. A musician cannot know how good he is until he sits down at the piano and begins to play.

Hildegard would never have known her capacity to affect people if she had not made the decision to write, despite any feelings of worthlessness she experienced.

What are you withholding from the world? What are you holding back? Are you thinking about blogging but you’re not sure you’re a good enough writer? Are you thinking you’d like to start a business but you’re not sure you’re cut out for it?

There’s only one way to find out. Let me fulfill the role of Richardis von Stade (but you can call me Margie). Go ahead and try it. Write something down. Let a song come out of your voicebox. Let music play from your fingers. You might find that you’re a lot better than what your brain is telling you. You might find you have one heck of a lot to offer. Who knows, maybe you are the next Hildegard von Bingen of the blogging world or the business world. Maybe it turns out you actually are fantastically good at a lot of things. Maybe it turns out you have the power to affect, in a positive way, a whole ton people. Maybe your work, whatever that may be, will be remembered centuries or even millennia from now.

But you’ll never know if you don’t sit down to try it.

What are you waiting for?

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