Truth is stranger than fiction and it plays out in my life with regularity.
A half dozen years or so ago I was among the many people who played Mafia Wars on Facebook.
That led to my meeting and becoming Facebook friends with quite a few people I never would have otherwise met or come across.
One of them just became the mayor of University Heights in Ohio. As former members of the same mafia I hope to never play the role of Luca Brasi.
Ya know, no conversations sleeping with the fishes or wishing his first grandchild be a masculine child.
Not familiar with it? Really? You need to go watch The Godfather movies.
Submit To The Slow Burn
I am tempted to share some quote about youth and how it is wasted on the young.
Tempted to do so as part of the tale of how I am constantly exhausted because of the load I bear and how much easier it was physically 25 years ago to do what I do.
There’d be the usual bit about mental toughness with a double dose of how that kid couldn’t deal with what I have and am now.
It is all true just as it is true that I can’t do what the kid could do. Too much wear and tear on the body and not enough time spent repairing the damage.
There have been multiple moments where I have planted my feet and set my shoulder into the wind with the goal of stopping the clock and maybe even turning it back.
I have had success but as of late it has been more limited because of the fire that burns. It is partially contained and only with a significant amount of effort.
Sometimes I am certain I can bend it to my will and find a way to make things happen on my schedule but most days I see submitting to the slow burn as the more likely scenario.
Those are the days I hope to avoid melting down and thus far success has been mine. If I hadn’t already had practice dancing in the fire I’d be in trouble.
Maybe I ought to ask the universe to rescue me or give me the tools to rescue myself. I’d like to have those same tools to rescue others but without magic I think the best I can hope for is to rescue myself.
Kind of fits with the selfish nation we seem to be.
Your Skill Set Needs Work
During the past eight or nine years I have managed to use the blog to make a few bucks here and there.
I have worked as a brand ambassador, gone on trips and received products all because I figured out ways to tell a story or share experiences with words.
It has never been on the scale of other bloggers who have made significant amounts of money or done much bigger things than I have but I haven’t tried very hard to make that happen.
Sometimes I wonder if I made a mistake by not getting more involved earlier on because I missed out on opportunities because I wasn’t known.
During the hard times I went through it would have been huge to have been able to generate more income via the blog.
But I didn’t and we can’t go back in time so we look at what is going on now and go from there.
Speaking of that the push now is to do more with video and or podcasting.
I did some video work recently for an upcoming campaign and thought it was alright…until I saw what some other guys did.
Their work made mine look awful.
It’s a little embarrassing so I need to work on stepping up my game or just focus on the wordsmithing here.
The video thing attracts and repels me.
I like the idea of becoming better at it and learning how to use it to tell a better story but I don’t want to be one of those people whatever the hell that means.
Podcasting Practice
I go back and forth about whether I want to try to create a podcast.
If you are among the long time reader you know I have messed around with audio for years so I am not completely unfamiliar with it.
But if I want to do more than occasionally mess around with it I need to do more than mess around.
I need to invest a couple of bucks into a decent microphone and learn how to do a couple of things to make it sound more professional.
And then I need to figure out topics that people will tune in for and then present them in a way that is informative, entertaining and educational.
The piece below isn’t necessarily educational but some of you might find it to be entertaining and informative…or not.
Final Thoughts
I may go hear the guy I mentioned last night speak but I am not sure. He is not in my district so I can’t vote for him but I am tempted to go because people respond to numbers.
Empty restaurants sometimes scare new patrons away and my presence might help lend some more credence to his campaign…maybe.
And even though I can’t vote for him because I am in a different district I am game for doing whatever I can to push back against some of the nonsense I mentioned on the clip above.
We’re going to out last the misfits who have assumed leadership in some places and we’re going to be here after they are gone.
But they can do a lot of damage while in office so we have to do what we can to try to limit it.
I am going to work against that however and wherever I can.
Not just because our children deserve it, but because we deserve it.
That slow burn only stays slow if we work.
