1) Why I’m so negative about positivity (read)
2) Covered-up graffiti tags as art (short read)
3) It’s just cheese (short read)
4) Mob the house (event, Madison, Wis.) (Giving a little love to MobCraft Beer)
5) The free and the antifree (read)
Uncomfortable Is Original
Many blogs, many books, many talks are very, very unoriginal. The reason being is they are safe, they are familiar. Ever heard someone say every business book says the same thing, but in a different way? I’ve read enough of them that I would even push back on the “different way” part of the statement. I think all the writing was rushed.
Taking time
It is amazing how well one can write when one takes the time. Think about it. When rushed to write, you use and accept your clichés. Perfect example: journalism. The tight deadlines encourage the use of clichés, of simplification, of uniformity.
When you take time while writing, you find ways to say things better than a cliché can. If you decide to use a cliché, you at least spin it on its head and make it breakdance.
To craft something original…well, it’s scary, it’s uncomfortable, and it takes time.
When you write something original. It’s weird to leave it as it is. You want to change it for fear no one will understand it or like it. It sounds weird in your head reading it over because you’ve never read anything like it before. Orange frizzled daiquiri wedding cake looked sexier than a toucan during mating season. Wasn’t reading that fun? New? An adventure? I wrote it and it feels so weird keeping it.
Alas.
Weird is original and relatable.
The thing about weird I love so much is it will never go out of style. The world will always contain compartmentalists, always produce naysayers, always attract keepers of the status quo — those who are satisfied with the comfort of everything unoriginal. There will always be those resistant to new things and those who fear anything other than what is routine, common, and banal. Yet! There are and always will be those who love and connect with the weird.
Even in light of it all, I still say do what has never been done before. Word the sentence the way you’ve never read anyone word it. If you question whether anyone will like your writing, if you think it’s too far out there, then it’s complete. Ship it. The people who matter in this world (at least who matter to you, to your art) are out there. Wayyy out there. (Think Long Tail)
Build it and they might not come. Build it weird and more will arrive than you ever expected. The freaks shall inherit the earth.
As a dear PR-wonderwoman-friend-of-mine said, “Weird is in. Weird is good. Weird is awesome. Weird is essential. Weird is where the magic is.”
Stay Positive & Go Bananas
p.s. this goes for more than just writing
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What Do You Rely On
If Twitter ceased to be and whether or not something new took its place, would your business, your brand be doomed?
If Facebook finally got old, if people quite trusting businesses who use it for sponsoring ads, if millennials ditched it and you were left with the other kind of seniors, would your business, your brand still strive?
If the social media medium you rely most on disappeared tomorrow, would you need to revisit and redo your branding strategy or have you developed a plan that’s medium-versatile?
While there’s no guarantee any of the current social media outlets will dissipate, there is a guarantee that a new one will become hip. It will only serve you success if you build your business, your brand in a versatile, universal, liquid form that can fit the shape of any new social online medium.
Better to build in adaptability than to be swallowed up by the next big thing.
Stay Positive & Be Ready To Ride Any Currant That Comes Your Way
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Monopoly, Anyone?
I’m not particular to “what if” situations, but I’ll make an exception here.
What if you looked at all the barriers, all the red tape, all the content creation you have to do to get ranked high on Google search results as a way to challenge yourself, to prove your or/and your business’s value, to exceed expectations the gatekeepers have set for you?
What if, instead of trying to find a loophole in the search engine’s logic, instead of posting ads on craigslist to pay people to click your links, instead of trying to skip ahead in your journey, you play the game and play it better than everyone else who is playing it.
We’re all just about past the age when we are impressed by those who hack in the untraditional aspect. We’re more impressed by those who can hack success while playing by the rules.
Anyway, the system rewards those who stick around for the long run. Rather than cheating or flipping the board over on the winners, why not see if you can get to their level first.
Stay Positive & Do Not Pass Google, Do Not Collect $200 Adsense
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The Momentum Deception
As you consistently do something, it gets easier to continue doing it.
Write a blog post a day for two weeks and it becomes easier to do so for four weeks. After four weeks, it becomes easier to do so for two months. Before you know it, it’s been two years.
The Momentum Deception is once you’ve got a lot of momentum going for you, it becomes more difficult to stop. In reality, it’s just as easy to stop your momentum as it is to continue it. If anything, it gets easier to do both.
You don’t need a computer virus to break your blogging momentum, you only need to think “oh, what’s one day off going to hurt?”
Well it can hurt more than you can imagine.
Stay Positive & Stay Strong
Enlighten Others
Overcharged For What
Overcharging rarely has to do with the product itself.
When going out for breakfast and seeing $11 is the cost for a couple of pieces of french toast, you’re not overcharged for the french toast.
“For that much they oughta be there to wipe the syrup from my lip.”
Would you think you were overcharged for the french toast if you knew you would have your own personal waiter, only there to wait on you? Or what if the cooks made a presentable plate of french toast? Or as some restaurants do, what if they cooked it right in front of you and made it a show? Would you still feel overcharged?
We feel overcharged when a transaction lacks special delivery, when the price is high on a “you get what you see” purchase, when there’s nothing remarkable about the experience of buying the product.
Delivery matters so much. I’m not going to wait in a line to pay $11 for the same type of french toast I can get elsewhere for $3 or $4. Not when there’s no other reason for charging $11. Nope. Sorry.
Said it a million times over. How you deliver matters.
Stay Positive & No One Feels Overcharged If You Overdeliver
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Enlighten Others
What Makes An Artform Remarkable
The Importance of Being Earnest is by far my favorite play. I’ve read it twice and quoted from it multiple times over in my writing. (Also bias in the sense Oscar Wilde is my favorite poet.) I was finally fortunate enough to see a live rendition of it last night, and the show reminded me what makes a play or any artform remarkable.
People never talk about perfection and if they do, they are lying.
From a three hour-long play, only two actors made one mistake each. They merely started a word and, half-way through, restarted the word. There was a millisecond moment they questioned whether the word they were saying was the right word or not.
Again, over the span of three hours and thousands of words, only two moments reminded the audience the actors are human, and those two moments make all the difference in a remarkable show and an unremarkable one.
Jugglers, Actors, Humans
The reason jugglers attract such a crowd is they are in a constant state of risk. Even the most professional jugglers in the world still drop what they are juggling. If jugglers were perfect, no one would be impressed. The same goes for a playwright. The same goes for any form of art.
Slight noticeable errors are what we all relate to; it’s part of being human. When a minimal error is made during an act, it reminds the audience just how difficult, incredible and remarkable the art you’re doing is. As Earnest would suggest, it is mixing pleasure and science.
If anything were perfect entertainment (pleasure), it would go without being talked about. People talk about great experiences, sure, but never perfect ones and if they do, they are lying. (Consider giving them dental floss and reminding them lying through their teeth doesn’t count as flossing.) When an error is made, science complements pleasure.
The universal relation of humans is we may all strive for perfection, but we will never reach it. Any reminder of this concept, say, a slip of a word during a three hour-long play is what makes art of any kind, remarkable.
Stay Positive & Do Something Remarkable, Anything Except Perfection
