Passion

After Years Of Arguing It

After Years Of Arguing It

Garth Beyer

Writer Garth Beyer

I’ll finally admit it… Identifying your passion, discovering what it is you really love to do, finding your purpose is a damn difficult thing to do.

For some it seems to come so natural. That, too, I once believed. I don’t anymore. Being more forward with you, I thought I knew I always wanted to be a writer, an entrepreneur and a PR guy (even though I didn’t know the term PR at the time). “It’s  just who I am!” I would tell people.

Investigating my past, though, I can’t recall the moment when I knew. There was no epiphany, no wide-realization, no godly pronouncement of my passion.

After scrutinizing my past, I realized that it was through a series of forcing, tricking, and driving myself to love the things I did that lead me to declare I was a writer, I was an entrepreneur, I was what I now know is called a public relations strategist.

I didn’t always love writing, but I was always finding ways to love it. (Still am.) It started with poetry because I knew I couldn’t fail. It moved on to bullshitting school papers because I could mock the system when I received the same grade as someone who spent weeks on the same paper, and I, only hours. Writing became more fun when I could write love letters and make women blush. And starting this blog? Best decision of my life for reasons it would take a book to detail.

I didn’t always want to be an entrepreneur either, but I always found ways to love it. (Still do.) I started my own vending machine business with my dad because I loved eating the leftover candy. I helped run a card shop because I loved collecting pokemon cards at the time and got to watch old batman movies when no one was in the shop. Instead of a lemonade stand, I had a beanie babies stand because it connected me with more kids my age.

I didn’t always want to go into Public Relations, but it was a knack of mine finding ways to love it. (Still is.) Meeting new people and going to events alone was rough, but I made business cards for myself. They made me feel I deserved to be there even though I didn’t have an established PR business. I went to dozens of Toastmaster (public speaking org) meetings, not because I was fearless, but because I could learn from others’ failures so I didn’t make the same when I finally forced myself to the podium.

Passion isn’t really something you seek out on purpose, it’s more of something you come across. You don’t need an “aha” moment to realize what it is you’ve been put on this world to do. You get there by finding reasons to love what you’re already doing.

 

Stay Positive & You’ll Do What You Love, When You Love What You Do

Marketing Cookies And Crumbs

Marketing Cookies And Crumbs

Garth Beyer

And That's The Way The Cookie Crumbles

Some go into marketing and only work on accounts they are passionate about. Others go into marketing merely for the money. That’s alright.

Some consume products because it makes them feel good, builds their ego or gives them something to talk to friends about. Others consume with the mindset “our wants our many, our needs are few.” That’s alright, too.

That’s not just the way the cookie crumbles, that’s how we like it.

Some love the cookies, some love the crumbs.

 

Stay Positive & In The End, We All Feel Fat, But Happy, Too

Isn’t that what life is about? Being happy?

Photo Credit

A Bit On Voice

Garth Beyer

Without any legitimate training in the understanding of artistic material, you can tell good from bad.

You may not be a graphic design expert, but I trust you can look at a website and tell if it is designed really well.

You may never have touched an instrument other than the pots and pans of your mother’s cupboard, but I will bet you can tell when an orchestra is in harmony.

You may think you’re a terrible writer, but when you read something someone else has written, I just know you can tell if the writer has voice or not.

Everything in life speaks to us, but only if it’s given a voice.

A lot happens, rather, doesn’t happen when a writer fails to have voice in their writing. When there’s no voice, there’s also no humanity in the piece, no node for the reader to connect to, no electricity.

Peter Elbow refers to voice as juice. “’Juice’ combines the qualities of magic potion, mother’s milk, and electricity,” Elbow said.

By ‘magic potion’ he implies there is power in the words, power to change the reader’s emotions, power to produce an entire world in one’s imagination, power to turn someone’s worldview over in a pan and call it sunny side up.

In mother’s milk you receive the nutrients you need to grow. Voice is a way of using words to express how much you care about a subject, and, by extension, the reader. Words that nurture the reader, giving them all they need and more, those words have voice; you might even say your mother’s voice.

As for the electricity I have mentioned, it’s about conversation and establishing an experience. Do you know what I mean?

That, right there is a question I’ve posed to you through the written word. Your engagement level rose, perhaps you answered the question, perhaps not. If you did, that is because there is voice in my writing. Maybe you wanted me to explain more of what I meant or in your mind added to my side of the conversation.

Conversations have energy and develop experiences.

Voice, in a way, is energy. Words can touch a person, pat them on the back, tap them on the shoulder, and stroke fingers through their hair. If you type words the way you say them conversationally, that’s how to find your voice. Then you can proceed to clean up the flow, but not too much.

Elbow also disccusses the potential and often-occurring action of overcorrection. You may have voice in your writing and through editing, remove the voice. Making all the corrections you can, editing something so it reads and looks perfect, takes out the humanity of the writing, and humanity is what people connect with. Notice the spelling mistake at the beginning of this paragraph. It reminds you I am only human.

While removing all spelling errors doesn’t quite remove your voice, reworking sentences so they are completely grammatically accurate can. When you make writing flawless, the reader thinks a robot is talking to them. No one wants to be spoken to by a robot. Unless, of course, they are a robot.

 

Stay Positive & Everything You Do, Do With Voice

Know What You Want To Do In Life? You’re Still Behind

Garth Beyer

Asking what someone wants to be when they grow up is stopping the ball short. Same goes for the person who asks herself what she should really be doing with her life. If I ask you to tell me a color and you say “green,” that’s not enough either.

What kind of firefighter? What type of entrepreneur? What shade of green?

When Steve Wozniak decided to develop a computer (along with Steve Jobs), do you think he just thought to himself he was going to become a computer developer or did he think he was going to become the riskiest computer developer? the best computer developer? the most design-in-mind computer developer?

Think Seth Godin thought he would be just another marketer? Think Adam Levine thought he would be just another lead singer? Le Corbusier, David Meerman Scott, Zig Ziglar – they didn’t just think they would fill a spot in the world, they decided they would make a spot by doing things differently than anyone before them.*

When we decide what we’re going to do with our lives (for the time being, until we decide something new [and that’s okay too]), we have a chance early on to decide to do something difficult, to trailblaze, to do something in a way no one has thought of doing it before. Don’t become just another ______ (fill in the blank).

If you thought it took long to figure out what you were truly passionate about, imagine how long it takes to turn that passion into something different, unique, remarkable.

 

Stay Positive & Better Get Going

*Certainly they leveraged themselves by doing what those in the field they were interested in had done before, but they also improved, added, and twisted the techniques into their own.

I Haven’t Been Home

Garth Beyer

I had a strategic communications professor who at the start of the very first class told everyone if they currently were not the type of person who goes home each day and spends an hour using photoshop or if they didn’t bring their computer with them to the terrace to work on mock ads or if they didn’t have a journal with them at all times to draw ad concepts, then they weren’t passionate (advertising) designers and should be sure they are taking the class for an alternative reason, a different pursuit.

Friends upon friends of mine state something is their passion (gaming, writing, football, design, etc,.). Yet, when I ask if they’ve done their passion lately, they’re response is they haven’t been home or they left their computer somewhere or there wasn’t any time.

I have to agree with my professor that if you haven’t done your passion because of any of those reasons, then it’s not really your passion. Not saying you shouldn’t do it at all, merely be sure you’re doing it for a different reason, one worth doing it for.

 

Stay Positive & Is Your Passion Really Your Passion?

It Will Be There In The Morning

Garth Beyer

How do you feel reading the title? Does it make you cringe? Knowing the work you have will be there in the morning no matter how late you stay at the office?

Or is it a commitment to a work/life balance? Go ahead and leave work at 5, it’s okay, the work will be there in the morning. Make sure you have a life too.

Or does it invoke passion? Does it blow air at the fire in your belly? Do you go to sleep thankful for having something you’re passionate about to work on in the morning?

Let’s be sure we’re doing work that matters and work we love.

 

Stay Positive & No, There Isn’t A Difference Between The Two

 

Grow Instead Of Standing On The Shoulders Of Giants

Garth Beyer

What makes you feel a sense of self? Rather, what makes you not question what makes you feel a sense of self? What is it you do that you never regret taking the time to do? What are you okay with failing at?

Is it okay with you to prioritize some other activity over what you’ve just responded with?

We have to take our joy, our pleasure, our passion seriously. We can’t let perfection stand in the way of creating our muse. We can’t let critics steer us on a different path with only their voice. Most importantly, we can’t let ourselves be sold short… by ourselves.

If you’re concerned about time, you’re wrong about what you’re passionate about. The theory of relativity isn’t just something Einstein scientifically proclaimed, it’s something he felt while he worked. Time is relative for everyone, but nearly non-existent when we’re doing what we love.

It needs noting time can become irrelevant when you do many different things, not just one.

The important actions to take are the ones we feel we should, not the ones we think we want. It’s rare, but now and then I feel I should pull out a canvas and my paints to create an ugly piece of art. I do, I lose track of time, and I know nothing will come from my painting endeavors, but in that moment I did what I felt I should do, not sit back in the recliner and play video games, what I think I wanted.

Are you okay with blowing off what you feel you should do? Does it not bug you when you do? Are you ignoring it how you feel when you do, using what you think you should do as an escape from the feeling of what you feel you should do?

So many are. We need to stop.

 

Stay Positive & Sure, Seek Giants Out, But First Become One