This Is My Personal Blog, Read Ahead At Your Own Peril
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I'm a writer. I write for a lot of reasons. Most of the time I write to help people understand the Internet and marketing there better. Occasionally, I need to get my warped sense of humor's festering out of my head and write funny stuff. (Okay, funny to me.) And every now and then, I write to get the mind goo out of my system, too.
It's not depression, per say, but just those thick, slow-motion causing thoughts that make you think the same issues over again and again only to come to no conclusion. You finally fall asleep, frustrated, in the wee hours, out of exhaustion of thought.
(If this never happens to you, congratulations and kiss my ass.)
In no particular order, this is what's bothering me:
- I have about 55 hours a week to give to my work with family obligations and personal health priorities considered. I have about 75 hours worth of work in most weeks, though. Our competitive marketplace is producing a workforce that prioritizes one-upping the competition in or out of the office over sleep, family, health, God and everything else. We're made to feel like if we don't kill ourselves working we'll lose foothold and have to go back to waiting tables. And frankly, that's bullshit. I love my family, I need to focus on my health more, I want to feel as if I can volunteer some time to my church, but I don't have time. Even though I work for myself, I still have clients. I still have deadlines. I still don't have time.
- The most recent issue of Time Magazine has an excellent story about why Washington is doing no one any good these days. It's not Obama. It's Congress. Mainly, it's Republicans who smartly figured out how to stall Democratic measures and blame Government, regardless of which party is in power. Their blaming of Government makes the American people hate whomever is in power, but conveniently never the Republicans. And Mitch McConnell (from my home state and city of Louisville) is probably a primary instigator of it all. I'm ashamed we continue to elect him. I'm ashamed of our government (on both sides of the aisle) and am glad I mostly ignore them all or I'd stay pissed off.
- I cleaned out my RSS subscriptions tonight and dropped over 200 blogs from those I read in and around the social media, marketing, public relations and Internet marketing world. No one is really pushing the thinking anymore and that's disappointing. People are either camped out on Twitter ignoring their blogs, regurgitating how-to posts that everyone else is writing at the same time (or wrote four years ago), blogging about conferences they're speaking at or subjecting us all to rough drafts of chapters from their next book. As an aside ... and this applies to about 12 people over the last couple of years, not one person in particular ... If you're writing a book and sharing pieces of it on your blog, fuck you. I'm not buying your damn book, you vain sonofabitch. I subscribe to your blog because I want to know your opinions and insights about the industry issues of the day, not the tagline that will get you $10K more for speaking gigs once this crap is published. If it's not good enough to save it for the actual book, it deserves to stay on your shitty blog.
- While I'm on the subject, I hate myself for publishing my irreverent, irrelevant personal notions here because the worst blogs in the world are self-serving, ego trips. This blog is that, I guess. At least, though, I have the decency to put them on a blog that is described as a platform for such and not mix the posts in with the ones people actually want to read me for. Nanna nanna boo-boo, stick your head in doo-doo.
- I would rather eat broken glass than watch Hannah Storm on television. Why ESPN rearranged their morning programming for her, I'll never understand.
- The last couple of years has been a crazy ride to professional success for me. I hope there's a lot more to come in that category. But I still sit at home after my wife and kids are in bed and wonder why God has chosen to bless me. I'm an unspeakably flawed individual.
- Aside from the personal flaws, I also know the professional success I've had recently can be considered an exercise in misdirection. I can think of two dozen or more people in public relations and Internet marketing IN LOUISVILLE who are far more experienced and smarter than me. The only difference is I bother to write my thoughts down and publish them publicly. Don't get me wrong - I think I'm plenty smart and qualified to do what I do for clients - but when I look around the web at the collection of thoughts out there, I am keenly aware that blogging has a unique power to elevate and mislabel mediocrity.
And with that, I'll stop. If you made it this far, I apologize. Good night.
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