Putting the (virtual) cart before the horse

Photo credit: chahad (stock.xchng)

It was a fitful weekend, and this Mouse was overdue for a good meander. After dinner plans with a friend got postponed, I decided to take a walk in one of my favorite places, the Floral Park neighborhood in Santa Ana.

It was a great time to walk – in the latter part of the afternoon, when the heat and sunshine that can interfere with a good walk were on their way out.

When I have nothing to do but put one foot in front of the other, it energizes my mind. I thought about which home tours I went on between 2009 and now. I thought about all of the spiders I discovered spinning giant webs between the trees. (If I were a spider, I’d choose Floral Park, too!) And, as oft happens, I thought about my career in writing and graphic arts and what I would do to improve it.

I remembered an article in Writer’s Digest about what today’s writers need to do in order to succeed. The top three suggestions were, I believe:

1. Sell yourself on Facebook.

2. Sell yourself on Twitter.

3. Sell yourself at every frigging opportunity you can think of.

With all of this selling, when will you find time to – ahem – write?

The people and companies that I follow on Facebook and Twitter give me real value. They are (mostly) people I liked before I found them on Facebook and Twitter – people I liked before Facebook and Twitter even existed.

Which gets me to the story of the cart and the horse.

The horse is your core message – who you are, what you have to offer the world, whatever it is that makes you a creature unlike any other.

The cart is your marketing program, whether it be social media or more old-fashioned types of advertisement.

If your horse is weak, it’s not going to pull your cart very far.

If you put so much effort into building your cart that you neglect your horse, you’re going nowhere.

If your message resonates, it will keep your social media cart rolling. You will have many followers because you will have earned them.

People who send out tons of boring, useless Tweets are the first to get unfollowed. People whose Tweets are always informative, entertaining, and/or helpful – whether or not they have anything to do with the business – will hold on to their current followers and add many more.

It’s the content of your content that matters.

In short:

1. You should spend no more than half an hour – if that – on your Twitter and (professional) Facebook accounts per day.

2. Before you post, ask:

     a. Is this relevant to my current and would-be followers?
     b. Would this post make me want to follow myself?
     c. Does this post make my business shine?

3. Feed your horse first, and your cart will go, go, go!

Beware of what you “know”

Photo credit: pepo (stock.xchng)

The older I get, the more I know that I don’t know what I think I know.

Take for example these words: There are more black men in prison than in college.

You’ve heard or read these words, or a sentence similar to them. Presidential candidates and rappers and nearly everyone in between has said this.

Howard University professor Ivory A. Toldson, PhD reveals that in fact, there are 600,000 more black men in college than in jail. Furthermore, the “more black men in prison than college” myth not only is not true now, it never has been true.

Why does this myth persist?

It’s easy. It’s shorthand for saying that “racism is still a problem, people.”

It could be that too many black men are in jail for trivial reasons, and we should not only be talking about that, but moving to fix that. Passing on a “fact” that is not a fact, however, is the furthest thing from helpful.

You have also read/heard this: Half of all marriages end in divorce.

Again, what is the reason for this statement? It’s shorthand for “people don’t care about tradition as much as they used to.”

What I care about is: Is it true?

Not exactly. What happened is that in 1981, there were 2.4 million marriages and 1.2 million divorces – in other words, half as many divorces as there were marriages. So, half of all marriages end in divorce, right?

Wrong. It’s not that simple – as if half of the people married that year decided to divorce. The reasons for divorce are so idiosyncratic that it is difficult to predict an accurate divorce rate. People get married with such hope and resolve – but no one knows what will change in the future.

What else do people “know” that they don’t?

How about government workers are lazy? Anyone who has worked in a private office, or who has spent enough time in any service establishment, knows that laziness can be found all over. And so can industriousness. No matter what John and Ken or The Simpsons say, I have never had a real problem with the DMV. When I go, alone or with Two Dogs, to the DMV, I admire the people who do their best in a service-intensive job.

And, say, men don’t ask for directions? Half the people who have ever asked me for directions were men.

What about the toilet seat being up or down is a big deal? Really? If I go into the bathroom and see the toilet seat up, I put it down. When Two Dogs goes into the bathroom and sees the toilet seat down, he lifts it up. That’s the way it goes in most households. It’s not that hard.

Who should you believe…what “they say,” or facts researched and tabulated? Or, for that matter, what you have observed in your own experience?

In other words, science?

Represent, Mr. Spock.

I just dont get BDSM. Sorry.

Photo credit: kk+ (Flickr)

A few days ago, I visited Slate.com, one of my “everyday” websites, and found this article by William Saletan about BDSM. Saletan, who writes in the Health and Science section, has written what I have been secretly thinking for years.

BDSM – Bondage, Discipline, Sadism, and Masochism to the sheltered – lives outside the boundary of normal sexuality. I will go as far to say I don’t consider it sex at all.

To me, sex involves the direct stimulation of the genitalia for the purpose of pleasure. It can occur with just one person present, two, or a whole group of people – male, female, and/or in-between. Sex is joyful and fun.

If I see a BDSM scene, I see neither joy nor fun. I see physical and verbal abuse. I see people trapped by ropes. I see bare bottoms reddened by the strap. I see tender flesh trapped beneath leather and latex. I see the simultaneous psychological degradation of the roles of villain and victim. I could not imagine doing such things to someone I loved, nor allowing anyone to do such things to me.

The fact that it is consensual (in the best circumstances) does not stop the shudder in my spine.

Saletan writes: 

[G]iven the underlying dynamics—one person who wants to dominate, another who wants to be dominated—consent often blurs. BDSM attracts masochists whose boundaries can be pushed. It attracts sadists who like to push those boundaries.

To live on the edge, of course, means risking falling off altogether.

I also have to wonder what BDSM is doing to our psychic environment. Saletan tells us:

While reformers in India battle a culture of rape, Indian BDSM advocates extol the bliss of female masochism. While human rights activists denounce caning and waterboarding, BDSM lecturers teach the joys of caning and waterboarding. Abduction, slavery, humiliation, torture—everything we condemn outside the world of kink is celebrated within it.

Does the world needs more caning and waterboarding, or abduction, slavery, humiliation, and torture, no matter what the context? I think not.

I know, I know – I should be a good liberal and be completely okay with whatever consenting adults do with each other.

In my head, this is what I believe. I do not want to outlaw BDSM, neither in art nor in real life. (As if such laws would stop anything.)

In my gut, however, I can’t help but think: If you get off on abusing people, being abused, or watching either happen, there must be something profoundly wrong with you.
 
Sorry.

The trouble with networking

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“Networking” is a cold word. It sounds creepy, impersonal, and exploitative – and too often, that’s the way it plays out in real life.

How many career advice pages practically order you to go to networking events?

How many do you actually go to?

Have you found that they can take a big bite out of your budget (very few networking events are totally free)?

How much business have you gotten because of your attendance at networking events?

Honestly?

Have you met many (or even any) people who could be viable clients at networking events?

Have you seen too many job-seekers and not enough (if any) job-givers at networking events?

Do you feel guilty about asking successful people for help because you think you have nothing to offer them in return?

Do you collect other people’s business cards, then look at them the next day and wonder what the hell you should do next?

If you have gotten business because of a networking event, do you feel that you’ve earned it, or do you just feel you lucked out?

Do you feel that traditional, in-person networking events favor people who are loquacious, on the “E” side of Myers-Briggs? What happens if socializing with strangers drains you, or you’re the kind of person who doesn’t want to speak unless there’s a good reason to? 

What else can you do to gain new business – with the people who can use your help the most?

Anyone?

PICKSBURGH

Photo credit: phillq23 (Wikipedia)

(I was going through some of my old Microsoft Works files and found this list, which someone e-mailed me in the mid-2000s. I think it’s worth sharing with you…especially if you understand!)

Ah yes! "Picksburgh."

Yunz are from Picksburgh if...

You didn't have a spring break in high school.

You walk carefully when it is "slippy" outside.

You often go down to the "crick."

You've told your children to "red up" their rooms.

You can remember telling your little brother/sister to stop being so "nebby."

You've gotten hurt by falling into a "jaggerbush."

Your mother or grandmother has been seen wearing a "babushka" on her head.
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You've "warshed" the clothes.

I ask you to hand me one of those "Gum-Bands" and you actually know what I'm talking about.

You know you can't drive too fast on the back roads, because of the deer.

You know Beaver Valley, Turtle Creek, Moon, Mars, Slippery Rock, Greentree and New Castle are names of towns (and you've been to most, if not all, of them.)

A girl walks up to three of her girlfriends and says, “HEY, YUNZ GUYS!"

You hear "you guyses," and don't think twice. (Example..."you guyses house is nice.")

You know the Three Rivers by name and understand that "The Point" isn't just on a writing instrument.

Someone refers to "The Mon" or "The Yough" and you know exactly what they're talking about.

You remember the blizzard of 1994 (or 1976, or 1939, or...) and remember not being able to go outside because the snow was over your head and you would have suffocated.

Someone starts the chant, "Here we go Still-ers!" and you join in. In the proper cadence. Waving the appropriately colored towel.

Bob Prince and "There's a bug loose on the rug" hold special meaning for you.

You've either eaten a Farkleberry Tart or know someone who has.

You drink pop, eat hoagies, love perogies and one of your favorite sandwiches actually has French fries ON it.

You know what a "still mill" is.

You expect temps in the winter to be record breaking cold and temps in the summer to be record breaking hot.

You know what Eat 'N Park is and frequently ate breakfast there at 2:00 AM after the bar closed and made fun of people.

You order "dippy eggs" in a restaurant and get exactly what you wanted.

You spent your summers, or a school picnic, at Kennywood, Sand Castle, or Idlewild.

You've been to the Braun's Bread Plant or Story Book Forest for a school field trip.

"Chipped ham" was always in your refrigerator when you were growin up.

You refuse to buy any condiments besides Heinz unless a Pittsburgh athlete's picture is on the side of the container.

Franco, Roberto, and Mario don't need last names and you can recite their exploits by heart.

Your last name has 8 or more letters in it (and you either have a 'Z,' 'U' or a 'ski' somewhere in there) and nobody can pronounce it. And oft times, even if your name has fewer letters, folks still can't pronounce it.

Food at a wedding reception consists of rigatoni, stuffed cabbage, sauerkraut and polska kielbasa.

You'll send this on to family and friends who used to live in the Pittsburgh Area as well as to those who have never lived there, just so they can appreciate how different western PA really is!

I wonder how many of Yunz guys actually understood all dat?

Some people just don’t get dem things.

LeSSons from morning television

Let’s start this off with an admission I take pride in: I do not watch much television. I would be happy to only turn on the television when I actually made a conscious choice to sit down and watch a program. I don’t like passive watching, or watching for no good reason.

From Harlan Ellison, I learned Sturgeon’s Law (by science fiction writer Theodore Sturgeon): 90% of anything, whether it be television, movies, music, or books, is crap. In the case of television, I think the crap ratio may be higher than that. (Or maybe that’s the book lover in me talking.)

These days, I wake up at around 7 a.m., even on weekends. I want to know what is going on, so I turn on a morning news show. At 7 a.m., it’s always CBS This Morning.

Why that show?

Well, I can explain it using S-sounds, because I’m a punner at heart:

See-Bee-Ess (CBS) This Morning contains Solid news, Substance, and Smarts. It is not Salacious, Sensational, Stuffed with Sell-ebrities, or often Stupid like the other two network morning Shows.

And that, Sadly, is why CBS This Morning is third in the ratings.

But is that such an awful fate?

CBS This Morning gives what the other two shows do not. It has a loyal audience who would not be happy if it changed too much.

In business, I would rather offer good quality, and have a small yet devoted audience, than dumb down the content for the sake of popularity – and then no longer be proud of my product.

I’d rather be a Sturgeon 10 Percenter, thank you very much.

When was the last time you saw....

...colored toilet paper?

I remember when Charmin came in pink, blue, and yellow as well as white. It was nice to have bathroom tissue which was part of the decor, wasn't it? (Come on, scientists, let's discover some non-toxic paper dyes!)