Remember to relive your fearful moments.
1. So you don’t do the wrong ones again.
2. So you do the right ones again.
Stay Positive & While Fear Is Fear, There Can Be Different Results
Garth E. Beyer
Blink
Blink is an aberrantly exceptional book by Malcolm Gladwell, yes. But the action is something entirely significant on its own.
An artist notes, “on a good day blinking refreshes sight and brings clarity.” The act of blinking revitalizes focus and perception to the world, and I state this on no low-level.
If you were to walk around with your best efforts to refrain from blinking, you would experience every emotion on the right-wing of negativity. Alas, this is not necessary. In fact, for lack of a better term, I would consider us lucky that blinking is primarily involuntary.
It seems suggestive that in order to perceive, understand, inspirit and reanimate life, we must blink. What if we conceptualized blinking into our work and our art?
When we incorporate “blinking” into our efforts – whatever they may be – we are naturally prone to create more understandable products: alive, lit up, stimulated, lucid.
The only difference: this type of “blinking” is voluntary. Though, equally invaluable.
Stay Positive & Be Sure To Blink, And Blink Often
Garth E. Beyer
Enlighten Others
“That’s Disgusting!”
Sometimes I read incredible articles, uncertain if I will ever recall them again or if they have simply fell into that black hole I have in my mind.
Alas, my assumptions were countered.
Roughly four months ago, I read an article in The Chronicle Review called The Delights of Disgust. Today, not only four minutes ago, I sat down to write, a bowl of oatmeal from a local coffee shop next to me. Whilst eating, I found someone else’s DNA in the form of bristle in my oatmeal.
While Justin Smith does exceptional work ruminating on the idea of disgust, humor, and humanity. I would like to make an aside that’s worth noting (with less sexual and political prominence).
Oh, and here is the picture of the hair. I went to pluck it out of my food and ended up pulling and pulling and pulling. “That’s disgusting!” Right?
After putting the strand of hair to the side (as shown above), I continued to finish my oatmeal. The way I see it is this, will I let something disgusting (hair in food, smell of a fart, undercooked meat) influence my actions, but more importantly, my judgements?
For many who find themselves in a similar situation, would have complained, would have asked for a new bowl, would have ranted on Twitter, and would then avoid eating oatmeal for the next few weeks until the memory fades.
Aurel Kolnai, who in 1929 published an essay “Der Ekel” (“Disgust”) saw disgust as inherently paradoxical, to the extent that it is “a genuinely passive defensive reaction of the subject, … and yet, once aroused, it seeks out its object, as hatred does, in its entire significance, instead of unfolding according to the persona’s own condition.
Curiously enough, in any dictionary, “disgust” is juxtaposed with “humor.”
Since when did the demand of “smell my finger” become the force of what is disgusting, rather than the actual act of smelling the finger? And to the one asking, both the asking and the action of their finger being smelled is humorous. Is this not a perfect display of humanity? At the most basic level, something has an aroma, and we have the ability to sense it through smell. Then, the action of sensory perception leads to laughter. Yet, it’s not that simple, is it?
There are multiple variables attempting to dominate our lives, to make decisions for us, to dictate even. The major contributors to this dictation are morales, laws, politics, social structures and others. I’m not sure about you, but I’m not comfortable with letting disgust control me. I think the list of factors that behest our lives is long enough.
Stay Positive & Human, In Control
Garth E. Beyer
Enlighten Others
Living Is Easy
Do one thing a day that if you died the next day, you would have been happy you did.
Most will tell you to do one thing a day that scares you. Others will suggest to play it safe. Many ignore both and just don’t care. These are hard to do, extremely hard. The amount of effort that goes into failure is insubstantial.
But, living… living is easy.
If I may add one note coming from the journalist inside me, if there is one thing I have learned from watching and reading news, it is that people die. Every single day. For different reasons, in different ways, procuring different impacts. People die.
Life can be cruel, but only if it has the first move. That’s where you come in.
Make that first move, every day.
Stay Positive & Live, That’s All You Have To Do In This World
Garth E. Beyer
Enlighten Others
Let’s Cooperate
As in, fill in the mortar, wear the shoes issued to you, fit the status-quo, stick to the plan, follow the rules, do as everyone else does.
Traditionally, anything outside the aforementioned is considered not cooperating, which is a case of serious misinterpretation.
There are two correcting tributes about cooperation that must be noted.
The first is that cooperation is conversation. Cooperation is not an order of command, but a dialogue of two (or usually many more than two) people.
Second, cooperation is interaction. Interaction by definition results in a variety of influence and effects. A single demand of many is not interaction.
To cooperate is to dance, to play, to connect the loop of insight and feedback. Cooperation is vital in the workplace and even more vital in the home and the heart. Keep this in mind the next time someone tells you that you need to cooperate. You may need to remind them what cooperation really is.
Stay Positive & I Prefer Interactive Operation Over Cooperation
Garth E. Beyer
Enlighten Others
Breaking The Long Tail Into Phases
Phase 1: It’s a common misconception that books, movies, music, etc., just make it to the top 10, to the best sellers, to the “most popular” categories – one day you don’t see them there, the next day you do. It’s magic. Phase 1 of the Long Tail is making whatever you make, big: big audience, big profit, and big exposure. 50 Shades is a prime example, it is average price and a bestseller.
For the mass, one day it just showed up and they had to have it.
Phase 2: This is when a slight price reduction takes place. Most commonly found in the form of a sale, a discount, a sweepstake or giveaway. Phase two of the Long Tail is making it (perhaps 50 Shades of Gray) slightly more available. The goal is to reach an even larger audience that without the price reduction would have never been reached.
Phase 3: While phase two slightly expands the range of those who would purchase the product; phase three involves an even larger price drop. By now the production costs are paid, the creator has profited, and the goal is to reach as many people as possible while still making profit – small profit, but profit nevertheless.
Phase 4: By now, one can cut production completely and put the product online for instant download in multiple formats. The last phase is to offer the work for free, to reach everyone (at least with internet access). The goal is to catch even more eyes on the work you have shipped while you are producing new work that starts back at phase one.
This is the progressive and profiting idea of the Long Tail that most people see.
The problem with cutting the Long Tail into phases, though, is the sociological impacts that are created as a result. At each phase, you make those who participated in the phase before it more uncomfortable. “Why do they get it cheaper.” “I should have waited until the price went down.” “Next time I’m just going to hold off until it’s free.” While this has significant effects, there is one in particular that needs to be noted.
This effect directs more of those who participate in the first phase, to dig deep for the interesting, the odd, and the most creative items that are at the end of the tail. After all, everything ends up there anyway, right? In the consumer’s mind, inaction creates price reduction. In the producers mind, inaction prevents them from ever getting a hold of the work. With the Long Tail, the consumers right.
Looking back at all of this, it seems that the Long Tail actually has a negative effect. At least, if you follow it from phase 1, it does.
But, what if I told you that the Long Tail was meant to work in reverse, from phase four, from the end of it. That before 50 Shades found itself in phase 1; the author had been producing shorter creative work, gathering a tribe of followers.
The beauty of the Long Tail is that people are able to go up the tail in short phases. All with the start of a niche product and a small, but close tribe. For most, the box office movies, the best sellers, the “top 10,” were overnight successes. Really, they worked longer and harder than one can imagine getting there.
Enlighten Others
Calling All Non-Freelancers
We need you to freelance.
The jobless are – without objection – staying jobless.
Remember the common saying, “the best time to start a business is during a recession?” Well, starting a business is similar to freelancing, but without the vital need of initial high monetary input.
I also believe that no matter your career interest, there is a way to hack it, a way to freelance it. (Worth noting: joblessness also gives you the opportunity to take a different path, start something new. If there was ever a time to say “you have nothing to lose,” that time is now.) For many of those unemployed, turning your expertise into a freelance model will immediately define your profession as a niche.
All that leaves is finding your market: given the internet and the long tail – check, and check.
Unemployment? Spit on it. Jobless? Create yours. Desperate? Take a risk.
Stay Positive & The Unemployment Rate Will Change, Only When You Do
Garth E. Beyer