satorimedia

Comparative Culture: What We Care About

Thanks to 37Signals, I have become acquainted with Newsmap.

It's fascinating. You can literally pull up the news headlines from all over the world...and it's a telling comparison. Every other part of the world seems pretty concerned with Cyclone Gonu leaving 35 dead in Oman and Iran...but I don't even see it listed on the U.S. headlines. Strangely enough, the rest of the world doesn't seem too concerned about Paris Hilton being released from jail early, either - though India did list it.

Kind of disappointed in my culture right about now...

My current Reading

I'm falling behind.

To review for my adult site, I have a fiction piece, "Sacred Secrets" by Roxy Harte which is a bit difficult to read - not because it's badly written, it's not, it's quite good - but because the characters are working through relationship issues that hit a little too close to home.

And I'm also reading a review copy of "Dark Moon Rising" by Raven Kaldera, also difficult in light of relationship changes in the past year.

Out of curiousity (and at the recommendation of some of my favorite bloggers) I've also got "A Whole New Mind" in my bag, by Daniel Pink, which I'm hoping will be more than a bunch of cheerleading for the Age of Aquarius. So far it seems to be; I'm having to resist the urge, as I read it, to jump up and say "Yes! That's absolutely right!"

And Penelope Trunk's "Brazen Careerist" arrived in the mail yesterday, something I'm hoping will help me with my transition back to freelancing. The goal is to be able, by September, to either keep my day job or quit it. Whichever I want.

Freedom to choose.

The fine art of Headlines

I've been trying to focus my other blog, fameorfamine.com, on more popular issues, while remaining true to my own desire to talk about the performing arts.

Still, I feel a little shameless. This last headline: "So you think you can dance with the stars, Guitar Hero?" was a blatant attempt to put popular key words into the headline, and linking to a youtube video of the Pussycat Dolls (and I swear, it was ALL relevant!) has made me now get more traffic this morning than I did all day yesterday...and the cumulative traffic over the past three days is more than half of what I got for the entirety of last month.

Thank you, Google building 43....

Wow. That really, really helps.

"I’ll just remember the advice my former professor and Pulitzer prize winner John McPhee gave me when I first sold the book: “When it seems like writing is really, really hard, just remember: writing is really, really hard. I sit in front my my typewriter from 9 to 6 each day, and most of the time, I get nothing done.”"--Tim Ferriss, author of the 4 Hour Work Week

From interview at Lifehack.org

Well, that's embarrassing..

I thought I'd get a good laugh out of "13 Breeds of Freelancer and How to Up Your Game" from the Freelance Switch website. Instead, it's kind of depressing.

Looking at the 13 breeds, I could see myself in all of them--in fact, it was like watching the progression of my freelance career "Yeah, I jumped in with no business sense...yep, then I dropped that project...yep, then I panicked and was a pushover for that client..." Heck, I even dated a model.

I guess the scary part is trying to figure out if I really can overcome these tendencies as I prepare for the second time around...

Pooping like an Elephant with Dan Pink and Presentation Zen

Ok, I admit it, I just liked the way that header sounded.

Reading Gar's blog today was a nice break, since the book he recommends (Dan Pink's "A Whole New Mind") is one that I found the night before last, under my desk, right next to "Core Strength" essentials. These books had been purchased a while back, then life had intervened to keep me from reading them. I'd originally purchased Dan Pink's book to emulate Heidi Miller's "What I'm Reading Now" professional reading list on her blog.

And here I am this morning, reading about presentation skills just before I go off to do some presenting/educating at a conference in Chicago, and I now have the perfect reading matter to go along with the trip! Nice bit of non-planning that ends up coming back at just the right moment.

To digress a little bit here, I have to say I'm beginning to suspect that there may be something hereditary - nature vs. nurture, that is - about presentation skills. I've often claimed that my own public speaking ability (in all modesty, not inconsequential) was developed over years of seeing my father, in church, speaking before the congregation. He was easygoing, funny, personable, had a great sense of timing, and I also began speaking in church as well, at age 8 addressing a stake conference of 800 people with a talk I'd written myself.

However, I'm no longer active in that church, and haven't been for years. So the same modeling opportunity has not been given to my daughters - they've seen me teach, and seen me perform, but public speaking? Not much at all.

How interesting, then, to see my middle daughter delivering her acceptance speech at the recent GSA for Safe Schools banquet (she was accepting the award for Community Activist of the Year). I saw the same mannerisms that I and my father use: engaging eye contact, a centered but easy stance, minimal but well-timed hand motions, a clear sense of timing and humor and warm, clear tones in the voice...she was good.

So. Maybe they'll identify the presenter gene eventually.

I was digressing, wasn't I? what I wanted to really mention was another of Garr's posts, about "pooping like an elephant" (aka giving it away). I've been asked by many people if I've really "made any money" from podcasting. Honestly? No. I've spent far more, in hours and equipment and travel, than I've ever gained.

But the people, experiences, the connections and lives I've touched...there is no way to put a value on that. And as I try to figure out, now that my kids are grown, what to do next...I'm beginning to think that pooping like an elephant might actually be a valid career path.

Sure, NOW you tell me...

Adrian Savage has come up with 10 simple ways to save yourself form messing up your life. What's funny is that the list makes me want to thunk my head on the desk, since a lot of these things are things that I seem to have needed to learn the hard way - that is, through a lot of misery, etc.

Of course, that headdesk feeling is part of my Inner Critic, and...

Take no notice of your inner critic. Judging yourself is pointless. Judging others is half-witted. Whatever you achieve, someone else will always do better. However bad you are, others are worse. Since you can tell neither what’s best nor what’s worst, how can you place yourself correctly between them?

Even better, though, is what he says about judging others:

Judging others is foolish since you cannot know all the facts, cannot create a reliable or objective scale, have no means of knowing whether your criteria match anyone else’s, and cannot have more than a limited and extremely partial view of the other person. Who cares about your opinion anyway?

I find this useful not for me, but actually for in my own tendency to really care about how others perceive my actions.

Goal for today: Live according to my own values, not someone else's.

War of Quotations

So, it started with me pointing out this cool device to my boss: Wireless Extension Cord (you have to love it just for the oxymoronic name!)

She had understandable concerns, though I personally think anything that reduces cables is a good thing. However, at one point, she replied with a quote:

"we must cultivate a sense of the whole and not cede to our technologies more dominion than their particular functions warrant." Neal Postman

Of course, thanks to wikipedia, I could riposte with:

""I don't think any of us can do much about the rapid growth of new technology. However, it is possible for us to learn how to control our own uses of technology." - Neal Postman

What I find amusing is that we work in the field of educational television, supporting our teachers, and yet if you read more of his philosophy:

"Another way of saying this is that a new technology tends to favor some groups of people and harms other groups. School teachers, for example, will, in the long run, probably be made obsolete by television, as blacksmiths were made obsolete by the automobile, as balladeers were made obsolete by the printing press. Technological change, in other words, always results in winners and losers."

So, going by this, not only are we an active part of the imminent demise of those we support...my friend, who makes his living as a blacksmith, should throw in his tongs (too bad, he's got a nicer living space than I, that's for sure). And I'll just have to give up my goals of growing up to become a "balladeer" (was that ever really a job? And more to the point: is he suggesting that fewer people make their living now through the creation of songs than did before the printing press?

I'm not saying he doesn't have a good point about the need to control our adoption of new technology. I just dislike the kneejerk Luddite attitude, especially where it bemoans the loss of one thing without acknowledging the emergence of another.

One step further from the need for a hard drive

While I'm thrilled and have geeky fun playing with the online desktop apps like Zoho and such, I'm sceptical. Mainly because when I don't have web access, I can't do anything with them - and that's a problem, for me. I don't seem to be able to quite trust the idea of ubiquitous up time.

That being said, finding out that Google will now allow (some) users to play powerpoint presentations from their gmail accounts is pretty darn cool, too. Maybe if we put google in charge of the up time, I would have more faith...

Sometimes You Just Gotta Do It

This morning, for some reason, I got up and lifted weights.

There's a little more backstory to it than this; almost a year ago I started "the Abs Diet", just for a 6-week run to see how I'd like it. The food habits changed slowly - while I don't follow it religiously any more, I do tend to make smoothies a principal part of my diet, and snack on nuts and fruit more than donuts and ice cream.

More surprising to me was that I grew to really enjoy weightlifting. Not only the effects on my body, the smile on my wife's face when she'd embrace me and find that her arms fit around me more easily, or the changing shape of my arms. No, I enjoyed the process itself, the repetitive, meditative struggle. My inner drill instructor would come out and yell at me to finish that rep, make that form better, and each little victory started my day off with the knowledge that I'd done something, achieved a goal, and whatever else happened that day, it would not be as bad a day as it could have been.

Then, without going into detail, about 5 months ago my life fell apart. And so did my regimen. Put simply, it didn't seem to matter any more - divorce and other upheavals simply made me not care.

Of course, there's more to it than that. Part of it was also punishing myself for my own failure, as I perceived it, and what better way than to both take away something I enjoyed and also begin to reverse all the good work I'd done?

After about 3 months I decided to start again...and that's when that Inner Critic shifted tactics. Procrastination became the watchword: Oh, you didn't get up early enough. You really should clean the basement before you lift weights. Probably should stretch first, and there's not time for that.

For some reason, this morning, the voice didn't work. Even though I'd been up past midnight helping a friend through an inner crisis, at 6:30 am I got off the futon and put on shorts and a t-shirt and started the abdominals. I didn't wait to clean off the yoga mat, I didn't go hunting for the right music on the iPod, I ignored the laundry on the floor and I simply did the routine.

Then I went to the basement. I didn't sweep the floor around the weight machine, I didn't futz with the laundry, I didn't even take the time to dust the cobwebs off the sliding plates. I just started lifting.

Thirty minutes later, I can go through the rest of my day knowing that, in spite of the slings and arrows that come my way - and lemme tell ya, in the 1/2 hour I've been here at work already, there have been some doozies - I have that familiar burn in my arms, my vision is clear, and I know that I at least started the day with something worthwhile.

Sometimes you just gotta get up and do it.