Like the corners of my mind…

So I was thinking…

What is it about childhood that crystallizes memories?  I can vividly remember the taste, smell and look of my favorite pizza growing up–Uncle Charley’s in Wexford, PA (yet I can barely remember what I had for dinner last night).  I can picture every nook and cranny of my childhood home on Grubbs road.  I remember small, random details like the metal feet to my Grandma Holloway’s tub or the weird baby doll in Grandma Wilson’s hall closet that smelled funny.

I vividly remember the bad things too.  Like coming down the stairs one morning to learn that my grandmother had passed away.  Like getting the news that my best friend’s father was killed in a work accident.  Like sitting down at a table and having my mom tell me that my aunt and uncle were getting divorced.

In so many ways, our lives are a collection of our memories–the good, the bad and the I-can’t-believe-that-actually-happened.

I wonder what memories my nieces and nephews will take from their childhoods.  I hope some of them involve Memaw’s crazy birthday hats, swimming in the pond and then trudging up 87 steps to the house, silly songs (I had a dog.  I named him frog.  He liked to swim in the cranberry bog).  I hope they’ll forget things like money problems, words spoken in anger, and every day they didn’t realize just how spectacular they are.

Each day is a gift.  Our memories are the receipts–the evidence that we have lived.

Living for the Weekend

So I’ve been thinking…

There is something profoundly sad about the comments so many of us make–myself included–like “thank God it’s almost the weekend.”  We discount the value of five of our seven days each week.  We are saying that we don’t appreciate 5/7ths of our lives.  And the truth is, most of us don’t appreciate it.

Why is that?  Is working so hard?  So bad?  I don’t know about you, but I don’t clean sewers for a living.  I’m not the guy in charge of executing the next prisoner on death row.  You’ll never catch me conducting a rectal exam.  No, I work in a really nice office.  My office mates are people that I would choose to have as friends.  Sometimes I get to do really meaningful work, like telling the story of an amazingly generous 14-year-old or empowering people to get involved in overthrowing some really bad piece of legislation.  I’ve gotten to meet some amazing people including the founder of Habitat for Humanity Millard Fuller.  I’ve ghost written pieces for the nation’s top newspapers.  I have a window office.

So why do I–and so many others–act as though we are just trudging through the week to arrive at two magical days called Saturday and Sunday?  Maybe it is because we resent that we HAVE to be at work each day.  If work was optional, maybe we’d be excited to come into the office.

Or perhaps we all just secretly resent that life didn’t turn out the way we had planned.  I know that I planned to be an academy award-winning actress who also happened to be President of the United States.  And Pope.  And a mom.  And independently wealthy.  So maybe the truth is that I can’t fully appreciate what I actually do for a living because it isn’t what I always wanted to do for a living.

My mother likes to say that the secret to happiness is to have an attitude of gratitude.  Don’t you hate it when your mother is right?

The Conundrum of Bloggingcon

So I’ve been thinking…

What is the purpose of blogging? Now that I am blogging again, I have to ask myself the question. Is it an exercise in self-expression? Narcissism? Generosity–sharing the wealth of one’s wisdom? Okay, definitely not that last one. But I hope it is more than screaming into the desert or flashing passersby in Central Park. I hope my blog is a seed that germinates thought. Perhaps a post will encourage someone to look at something differently. Perhaps it will inspire someone to rekindle his or her passion for writing.

Oh who am I kidding? A blog is the grown up version of shouting “look at me!’

When my nephew Ryan was little, whenever I would ask him how he was doing at some new hobby, he’d always reply with the same answer: “I’m AWESOME at it!” Maybe that’s what all of us bloggers are doing. We’re out here in the web-o-verse declaring, “I’m AWESOME at writing.” But I’ve read enough blogs to know that we all are not.

However knowing this, I still find it worth doing. Would I still do it if I thought no one would ever read what I wrote? Wouldn’t that just be a regular old journal or diary? If no one was ever going to read this, would I be more honest? Perhaps not more honest, but more, shall we say, comprehensive. There is a line you can’t cross in blogging. Okay, a line you shouldn’t cross. Because someday you’ll need a new job. Or you’ll need to keep the job you have. Or you’ll be nominated for an academy award and True Hollywood Stories will want to do a special on you.

What? It could happen.

Expert?

So I was thinking…

What makes someone an expert?

As part of my job in PR, I’ve been leading my firm’s online strategies efforts for about five years.  My job used to be called “director of new media” but then we rethought the term “new media.”  Let’s face it, “new media” implies that there is also “old media” –which of course there is.  But now that every old media outlet also has new media components (if you don’t believe me, just ask any print journalist if they are getting pressure to blog) do the terms still work?  So we decided to go with “online strategies,” which works just fine.  But I digress…

Back to the question at hand… what makes someone an expert?  The reason I ask is because I keep receiving emails inviting me to seminars led by “social media experts.”  Given that social media has only been around a few years and, more importantly, is evolving daily, can anyone REALLY be an expert?

If I invented a new musical instrument today called the filloobious, I would be the world’s leading expert on filloobiouses.  But that doesn’t mean you’d necessarily want to listen to me play it.

Perhaps all of us “social media experts” should instead position ourselves as “folks who pay more attention to this stuff than you do and have figured some stuff out.”  Just thinking…

Can we all be exceptional at something?

So I’ve been thinking…

I’m good at a lot of things (not to toot my own horn, but toot, toot).  But am I really exceptional at anything?  I’m not so sure.  I know that I want to be.  I want to find that thing at which I am the Renoir or the Michael Jordan or the Thomas Edison.  But even if I found it, would I have the courage to pursue it?  I’m forty.  4-0. Somehow, while I wasn’t paying attention, I got old.  Okay old-ER.  But still.

People always say to do what you love.  But I seriously doubt anyone is going to pay me to sleep or read Jane Austen or watch Katherine Hepburn/Carey Grant movies or hang out with my dog.  Or eat.  Okay, someone COULD pay me to eat, but I’m allergic to fish so I doubt I could get a job as a restaurant critic.  Also, I don’t drink so I’d have nothing to say about the competence of the sommelier.

I’m lucky that I get to do something that I like to do.  And I’m good at it.  Some would say that I’m really good at it (again, toot, toot).  But am I exceptional?  Who’s to say?

Can you imagine what it would have been like to have been Thomas Edison when the whole electricity thing came together?  Do you think that Renoir knew that he was, well, RENOIR? And when do you think it first occurred to Michael Jordan that he was not just great, but THE BEST?

Perhaps I can move to Lake Wobegon–where all the children are above average.   Does that apply to forty-year-olds?