Quite the Life (and all in Times New Roman 10pt!)
Say hello, you little cutie, you!
Ah, the young.
Out on their own, discovering themselves, discovering their world, making it, owning it, eating some dogfood.
Remember Ophelia? She had pups.
Every time I went to talk with her when she had pups in her pouch, camera at the ready (me, not her), she shuffled away.
Such private creatures.
Opalina is, we think, one of Ophelia’s pups due to markings.
Also her habit of starting every sentence with “Beware my piercing teeth, Two-legs.”
Whatever.
And such a cutie.
When someone asks “Is there something I can help you with?” the correct response is “What are you willing to help me with? How much are you willing to do? What is the cost?”
I make it a habit to look up people who’ll be speaking before I attend their session. I may look at their bio and often don’t because I’ve had 20+ years in marketing, meaning I know that most bios are hype. They are written to get you into the room, not to let you know what will be covered or how useful it will be. The bios may read as if they’re telling you what will be covered and how useful it will be (to a certain extent it has to or the presenter will get a rep for not-delivering on their promise) and their real purpose is to get you into their presentation.
So if your goal is to learn from the experts, first make sure they’re experts in more than name only.
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Excuse me while I kiss this guy. – Jimi Hendrix
Ever been shocked to learn the lyrics to your favorite song aren’t what you’ve been singing all along?
Welcome to prosody. Prosody is what happens when we misunderstand information. It’s usually attributed to auditory information because it’s based on the time interval between events such as the sounds of spoken words. A favorite example is the Jimi Hendrix line, “Excuse me while I kiss the sky” because people unfamiliar with the lyric often hear “Excuse me while I kiss this guy.” The sounds are similar, the timing between the sounds allow us to recognize “the sky” versus “this guy.”
Prosody also occurs when we can’t make out what we’re seeing, but now the challenge is with the time interval between visual events, not auditory. A tactile version of prosody occurs when you have someone tap near your wrist with two fingers then tap your forearm up by your elbow with two fingers. Our skin sometimes codes the AA-BB taps as AA-B-C or A-BB-C or A-B-CC based on the time interval between taps.
Greetings! I’m your friendly, neighborhood Threshold Guardian. This is a protected post. Protected posts in the My Work, Marketing, and StoryCrafting categories require a subscription (starting at 1$US/month) to access. Protected posts outside those categories require a General (free) membership.
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How not to sell your book
I know what you’re thinking; “That was stupid, Joseph.”
Yeah, well. Sometimes you just have to let the fool be slapped, you know?
I tend to not post on boards. I monitor them. I wouldn’t classify myself as a lurker. I don’t believe I have much worth sharing, don’t think of myself as interesting or noteworthy, don’t find the majority of comments worth a comment, so why get involved?
But today someone asked “Would you read a novel about two boys forced to take psychiatric drugs and the battle to save them?”
That’s a marketing question. I spent twenty-five years developing tools to answer exactly such questions. One thing developing such tools taught me is there are more important questions to ask before asking that specific quotation.
But before I go further, how would you answer that question? I’d like to know. As a reality check. Perhaps my response is way off base and I’d really like to know.
Continue reading “I made the mistake of responding to a question on Facebook”
Our greatest decision is deciding who we’ll be
I started writing Tales of the Woods during Winter break in freshman year of my first time through college. In the mid 1990s I contributed a Tale each month to a New Age magazine. Sometimes I wonder if I should gather them together and publish them as a children’s book of some kind.
Let me know what you think.
Once upon a time a beautiful flower rested in a Woods. All that came by stopped and wondered because few had seen a flower with petals so bright and stem and leaves so radiant. Many creatures stopped and sniffed the air as they passed, carrying with them the scent of her beauty. This flower, small and delicate and thirsting farther and farther, always reached for the rains and lights that brought her life.
One day as she sat and looked upon the hillside she noticed a lone elk wandering through the Woods. The elk walked strong and proud, his coat showing scars from the many contests he’d been in. Watching the else, she grew sad. “He is alone,” she said.
The elk didn’t come near the little flower at first. “Perhaps he can not see me,” she wondered. “Perhaps he is afraid.”
Each time she saw the elk she talked gently to him., each time the elk drew nearer to her. Finally he would come and sit beside the flower, telling her of things he’d done and things he’d do. The little flower listened and nodded. “We are not that different,” she thought. “We both have hopes and dreams.”
The elk came often and shared stories of the rest of the Woods and especially the things he had done, grateful for her listening and the time they had together.
One day the elk came bearing a long scar down his flank. He neither flinched nor stumbled as he moved but the little flower knew some horrible thing happened to him, something he would not share, something she could not understand.
But in all the Woods, the elk came to her for rest and comfort, for solace and quiet. Although only a small flower, she spread her leaves and stretched her petals as wide and as far over the elk as she could. And an amazing thing happened!
The little flower found that she wasn’t as little as she thought! Her leaves and flowers offered a shade the elk could find no where else in the woods; a place to rest and leave thoughts of conflict behind. She offered herself gladly to the elk, and the elk, unaware that the little flower had grown, slept quietly underneath.
Soon the elk awoke. He got to his feet and shook his mighty head, strengthened for the time he had beneath the flower’s leaves, the scent of her petals clinging to his coat.
The elk came and went many times thus. Each time the flower spread her leaves and petals. Each time her soft, flowery perfume rested upon his coat and gave him strength.
Each time the little flower thanked the Woods and all those in the Woods for her gifts. Many others came — small flurrying birds and scurrying little mice, wise old owls and ancient wizened oaks — to see the beauty of the little flower’s petals and leaves, and to heal their hurts with her gentle, fragrant scent.
But sometimes the love we give is not the love we receive.
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