Yesterday I saw someone share this tweet: Make sure your circle includes people who will tell you…. – No– Are you sure?– Have you thought about it this way?– That was inappropriate We have to have people in our circles who will push back, challenge, and therein make us better. All from a place of […]
Halloween is Magical
Halloween and Christmas have always been my two favorite holidays because both are centered on children. But Halloween has always seemed like a very special holiday and time of the year. Here in the South, you start to get a break from the heat and even cooler weather by the end of October. It actually […]
Why We Worry and How to Stop It
I think most of us can agree that one of the biggest sources of stress in our lives is worrying. For the most part, we worry about the future. We worry about tomorrow. We worry about how we will deal with something that is either coming in the future, or that we suspect will happen […]
The Magic of Being Second and the Spontaneous Hillside Dance
Years ago I saw a video from an outdoor music festival. The video showed a crowd of fans sitting on a hillside enjoying the concert. After a few seconds, one guy stood up and started dancing. By himself. He continued dancing, awkwardly, by himself for a minute or so. A few people nearby watched him […]
Fighting For Your Passion
One of the pieces of advice we are all given to having a happy life is to find your passion, The idea is, if you can find that one thing (or things) that you are truly passionate about, that moves your soul, especially in a work context, you can live a much happier life. If […]
Social Media Demands Perfection and Punishes Mediocrity
I have a small list of political reporters that I follow on Twitter. I avoid political coverage on mainstream media at all costs since I know most of it is propaganda, but I follow a few trusted sources for actual political news. One of the reporters I follow is a huge St. Louis Cardinals fan. […]
The Hate Game: Why No One Wins a Race Looking Sideways
(and one last thing, if you want something entertaining, go watch me battle some trolls in realtime: http://t.co/FXmpMWxKnP ,,,,k g’night). — Amanda Palmer (@amandapalmer) April 22, 2015 I’ve been following Amanda Palmer for a while now, she was one of the major music case studies in Think Like a Rock Star. Not because I’m a […]
Creating Content or Memories; Is Social Media Warping Our Priorities?
In 2008 I spoke at a small business conference and during the event for the first time I started tweeting takeaways from the sessions I attended. The attendees, many of who had no idea what Twitter was, were floored. They couldn’t believe that there was a conversation happening inside the session they were attending, yet […]
Skateboards, Sex, and Why We Are Always Chasing Numbers
Last night I watched a Frontline episode called Generation Like. The episode followed several teens that were learning how to use social media and learning how to create content that brought them popularity. Switching from interesting to depressing, the show walked us through how teens were training themselves and each other to learn what type […]
In Defense of the ‘Silent’ Experts…
I wanted to go slightly off-topic today to discuss ‘experts’. For the last several years in the social media space there’s been constant hand-wringing over how we vet who the ‘real’ experts are. One of the common themes is that when people claim to be experts that really aren’t, it makes it more difficult to […]