I’ve learned two important things today and the day’s not even over yet.
The first was that I learned that my highly entertaining friend, Debbie Simorte (we call her Auntie Deb, we want her to write an advice column for us and our super-woes…) doesn’t like the phrase “free range kids.” I though it was because she felt kids needed more supervision but it was not that. Her answer had something to do with not applying to people. I didn’t grow up in America and there’s much I don’t know, and for people like me who who love chickens, people like me who tend to cross those roads of language all too often, such transgressions of language rules are as common as is that fact that many people are fouler than fowl.
Anyway, Debbie opened my eyes to the fact that prisoners are called prisoners and not “cage-fed people.” Somehow, cage-fed sounds much nicer than prison to me.
She has other funny things to say at her blog Writing the Life Chaotic.
I digress.
It happens.
Often.
The more important thing is that I listened to a podcast by Seth Godin and was blown away by the obvious wisdom of what he was saying about blogging. He says (to paraphrase) you don’t decide to blog once and then re-decide the same thing everyday. You just blog everyday and don’t think about it.
Seth points out that your lizard brain is making you scared because that’s its thing, its what lizard brain does best when it’s not sunning itself on a fencepost somewhere.
Seth gave a reason for blogging and so I am, again, blogging. He’s right: my posts can sound like I talk and don’t have to be long and can even include chickens if desired.
The most important thing I heard was someone (Seth) who still understands that L-I-F-E has a value beyond our social media presence. His comments on tweets were hilarious. I was thrilled to hear someone say I don’t have to splatform myself (a term I use for for bombarding people with your message as if the first fifty times they ignored you were some type of accident).
I get it, it’s hard to rise above the noise.
So, kudos to Seth Godin for reminding us that genuine presence and real connection still have a value in this world. We need more people to take the pledge and calmly state: NO MORE SPLATFORMING.
