Once All We Had Were Words

The woman driving the Amazon delivery truck through the Costco parking lot kept her eyes focused on her right but never took her foot off of the accelerator pedal.

Can’t say if she thought her slow speed would help the pedestrians around her avoid being crushed or if she was lost in thought.

It took me raising my voice loud enough for dozens of people to wonder who was yelling to get her attention.

“Wake up! We’re here and no one wants to die today!”

She heard that, turned her head towards me and said something unintelligible as kept driving.

One of the ladies walking through the lot looked at me and said it is a good thing I am not afraid to make a scene.

“Those people who were staring at their phones might have been in trouble.”

I nodded, turned my head to the left and mulled over if I wanted to walk to the now stationary truck.

Chose not to because I wasn’t going to be kind if I did and saw no upside. I rarely get that loud so if it happens there is a good chance that vein in my neck is out.

Suspect SQ is among the crowd that is interested in finding out if my verbal skill matches my written.

The answer is sometimes because I have spent years focusing on it. Remember, once all we had were words and it was the only way I had to communicate thoughts and ideas.

Fired Up A Bit

Drove by one of the locations for The Keg and smiled because it is one of my favorite meals and memories.

Why?

Because sometimes the ordinary turns into the extraordinary and you experience a moment that at surface seems like nothing but in retrospect could be life changing.

Those moments are almost never planned for though the events that led up to and came afterwards are.

I can look back at a moment in May of 2019 that fits that. It was a business event and I had a conversation with someone that would change my life in a profound way.

Unexpected and unplanned I look at where I am today and where I was and I can trace it back to an exchange that started with someone telling me they thought of sushi as bait.

It wasn’t snarky or meant to be anything close to it but that moment at the Star in Frisco changed everything in a positive way.

Reminds me a bit of a moment from a thousand years ago when I used some health boards online to search for information regarding health.

That led to some big life changes too. It is part of what makes life so damn interesting, you never know what lies around the corner, a new partner in crime, career, vacation etc.

Beginning, Middle & End

Been thinking about storytelling and ways to improve my skills so I remind myself of the basics.

Every story has a beginning, middle and an end. Add some color in between to provide layers that help flesh out the characters and let the readers imagination fill in the rest.

“Boy meets girl. Girl chases boy and catches him. Boy and girl date. Girl dumps boy. Boy chases girl and catches her. Girl dumps boy and begs him to come back. Sunrise, sunset.

They figure it out and face challenges together. Sunrise, sunset.”

The outline is really that simple. All you need to do is add some meat to the bones.

Reminds me of how I was an early podcaster though no one called it that at the time. I would just pick up the phone and record material and then post it.

Got all sorts of responses from people because it took my words from the page and added a voice.

Though there were no pictures it still fleshed out some of the details because they could hear me add my person touches. You knew what I thought was serious or silly.

And frankly it got a big response because very few people were doing anything like that and it seemed novel. It was more exciting than it would be now.

Reminds me a bit of the feeling you got when you could move from writing letters to people to spending time on the phone. It just added depth.

You could ask questions in real time and build something based solely on words.

Never underestimate their power because you can move those who have declared themselves to be immovable.

Just takes the right combination to bridge the gap and a little luck with timing.