The JackB

"When you're in jail, a good friend will be trying to bail you out. A best friend will be in the cell next to you saying, 'Damn, that was fun'." Groucho Marx

Archives for May 2012

The Avengers, Hans Zimmer, Potential and Dad Bloggers

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“What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say.” ― Ralph Waldo Emerson

Eighty some pounds of 11 year-old boy scream at me. “You love basketball, dad. You do. Not me.”

I look down and stare into his eyes. They are burning a hole in my head. I see fire. I see flames. I see passion. I want to just accept what he says and let go, but I see potential.

Unfulfilled potential. He can play this game that I love. He can start playing at a younger age and be better than I was. He can start playing and not be irritated when other boys play because he doesn’t think he is good enough.

That is the thing. He doesn’t think he is very good and he wants to be great. He wants to skip past the hard work to be great or to not to do it. It makes me a bit crazy. He is not lazy, but he doesn’t want to try.

Thor (Marvel Comics)
Thor (Marvel Comics) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Twenty-five minutes before this discussion we are seated in a theater in Chatsworth. We  are watching The Avengers and both of us are captivated by it. I love these moments.

We are here because it is the weekend before my birthday and this has become a ritual to him. Last year we saw Thor and now we are back again. I love it because it is father/son time and because there is a boy inside who remembers when these movies were a dream.

I remember being 11 and talking to other boys about a time when technology would make it possible to make these movies look real. Potential. You couldn’t make these movies then without us being able to see all the tricks. We wanted to see it happen but it couldn’t.

And then it could. Now. Realized potential.

Go Cap Go!

Captain America is on screen. He is doing his thing and I realize I have just muttered Go Cap Go in a much louder voice than I had intended. No one has noticed except me or so I think.

Eighty some pounds of boy tells me that he likes Captain America but that I should know he likes Iron Man better. What he is really saying is that he is his own man. I love it and I hate it.

I hate it because I see potential. He is better at basketball than he realizes. I have some skill but most of my success comes from outworking the other players. I play balls to the wall and come home aching, tired and bruised. You can’t play as I do forever.

He can learn how to become a better player than I ever was. He won’t have to rely upon being as physical as I am. More importantly I am convinced that if we will give the game a chance he will love it. In fact I am certain of it.

Hans Zimmer

Midnight has come and gone. I have watched chunks of the 2012 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction and the Kentucky Derby. Meant to get to the computer much earlier but The Beastie Boys and Guns’N’Roses performances held me up.

The music and the passion that I see there captivates me. There is a love for their art and I recognize that. I love it because it has given so much to me. I want to odo the same with my words.

So I turn on a Hans Zimmer mix and I start writing. My friend JR is going to run a brief interview with me and I have to answer the questions he sent me. My responses are a mix of the serious and insouciant guy you see here, but I still wish I sounded better

Probably should have started working on it when I wasn’t exhausted, but damn life has been busy. Still thrown by Adam Yauch dying and Junior Seau’s suicide. Contemporaries, that is what they are. Didn’t know either one of them but in some ways I feel like we grew up together so it is sort of strange and bizarre to see them go.

I think about whether I should redo my answers and decide that the best way to figure it out is to clear my mind. I stumble onto a post called The Business Letter/Email Signatures With Bonus Audio and smile. I still hate it when people use “Best” as part of their signature. What the hell is that supposed to mean.

“A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is brave five minutes longer.” ― Ralph Waldo Emerson

I don’t have any answers. Part of the reason I write is to clear my head. I call myself a dad blogger because I write about being a father but I write about a lot of other things. I write about being a writer or should I say being a writer who earns his living by producing novels. Potential.

The tools are there. I have the skills and the ability. I need to live up to it and fill my potential. Part of my job is to help my kids live up to their potential but I don’t want to do that by bullying them into trying things they don’t want to do.

But I don’t want them to miss out because they don’t try either.

There are no easy answers here so it is time to turn off my mind and go to sleep. We had a good day. The movie was fantastic and we both loved it. I am glad he is asserting his independence.

He should be his own man. He needs to make his own mistakes but the question I ask is what do I need to do to help him reach his potential relative to playing ball.

Or do I just let it go and hope that one day he comes around. So many potential choices and so many potential outcomes.

There Are No Coincidences

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Sky Walker

There are no coincidences because what you see, hear and do are part of something greater than us. It is tied into something larger that can be described as both mystical and magical.

Don’t ask me to explain this because I can’t tell you how or why. All I can say is that I know because I have experienced it. I have seen it. I have lived it. I have been there and that is all the proof that I can provide.

It won’t be enough for some of you. It won’t be the kind of thing that you can accept because you can’t buy, touch or taste it. Actually that is not true, you can but only if you open your mind and let your soul seek its match.

I know this because for the longest time I didn’t do it. I spent years not buying into it or believing that it could be real. It wasn’t because I didn’t want to because I did. I desperately wanted to believe that this thing was something tangible. Because I just knew that if I could feel it in my hands and see it with my eyes it would prove that there was something to this dream I had once lived.

You see I fell in love with a girl and I loved her fiercely. I loved her madly. I loved her passionately. I loved her in every way that the poets wrote of, spoke of and dreamed of.

I loved her with all of my heart and all of my soul. I loved her desperately and somewhere in that madness I lost her.

Some of you can’t feel what I am saying. These words have no meaning to you. They are figments of imagination that you can’t feel, see or taste. So they never grab you. Your heart, your eyes and your mind are closed to them.

I can’t fault or blame you because I used to be like you. I used to look at this sort of writing and roll my eyes because I didn’t know. I hadn’t seen. I hadn’t felt it.

But that was long ago. That was in the time before I became who I am now. That was before I understood that love is a drug that can make you soar to the highest heights and or drop your ass into a pit so dark and dank you can’t remember what it felt like to see sunshine.

Some of you are nodding your head. You don’t even realize that you are doing it. You aren’t even aware that your pulse has quickened and you can’t see anything other than these words and even those are growing faint.

That is because we are running with the moon you and I. We are partners on a journey and you want to know more about my story because you hope that maybe it holds some sort of key insight to your story.

You want to know about the girl I loved and what happened to her. You want to know if there is hope for us because if there is hope for us there might be some for you.

The thing that is ever so interesting about this is that I haven’t given you much in the way of detail. You haven’t heard about how we met in the most unusual way or how crazy it all was. You don’t know how it is we fell in love. You wonder if I am exaggerating or maybe you don’t.

Maybe you know what it is like to have that kind of passion where you can’t stand not having that person in your life because there is a gaping void that aches and burns without respite.  Maybe you too were surprised to discover that the kind of crazy love you experienced the first time you ever fell in love could come back. Maybe you were shocked by the passion and overwhelmed by the loss of the friendship that you had.

Because that friendship threw you for a loop. It wasn’t just about love or lust. You liked them as a person. They filled the gaps and made you believe that you could be more than you were. They made you believe that all that hokey stuff you read in cheap paperbacks or saw on television might be based in reality. You understood that you could be naked in every possible way with them and be confident that they would caress your soul and cradle your heart.

It doesn’t have to be a dream. You don’t have to keep running with the moon. You don’t have to feel that enormous sense of loss or wonder whether you can ever love and be loved like that again because if it happened once it can happen again.

There are no coincidences. You can live your dream. You can find a way back. All you need to do is let go, submit to the reality of the possibility and accept that there will be opportunity.

It is not poetry or fiction. It is reality. It can’t happen on its own but if you ask and if you believe you will find the answer. You don’t need the old gypsy woman to sell you Love Potion number 9.

There are no coincidences.

It Is Not A Midlife Crisis

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What rankles my heart and kills my soul is the thought that I might die one day saying “If I had” or “I could of done/been” blah, blah, blah. These are not things that should be part of my vocabulary. Nor should they ever come from my mouth, but the disgusting and disappointing truth is that they do.

They do because sometimes I find myself staring in the mirror at an unfamiliar face wondering why I must be my own worst enemy and my greatest critic. They come from lips that look like my own and are seen by eyes that resemble mine but cannot really belong to me.

No, they cannot belong to me because there is something in them that I don’t recognize but then again I do. I see life experience. I see age. I see time. I see lines that never existed and I see someone standing next to me. He is not the arch nemesis I just mentioned, he is my hero.

He is the me I want to become and strive to be.

It Is An Identity Crisis

I choose not to look at this period of my life as anything but a moment in time. And the experiences that I have now are not going to define me. They may shape some parts and affect some pieces but by no stretch of the imagination will I lay down and let the bus run me over.

That is because this is not a midlife crisis. This is not a time where I run out and buy a sports car and find some 19 year-old girl to keep me warm. I had the 19 year-old girl and her slightly older friends. I did that when I was that age and I am not him any more. I am good with that.

No, this is an identity crisis where I am working out a few kinks. I am looking hard at what makes me want to wake up in the morning and what makes me want to stay in bed. This is a quest for joy and fulfillment. This is the moment in time where I point my compass in due south or maybe it is north. Doesn’t really matter as long as it is in pursuit of those things that I already mentioned.

Wired has a great interview with Joss Whedon that caught my eye for a host of reasons, but what I really paid attention to was the part about writing rituals.

Wired: Do you have writing rituals? Do you work on a computer? Do you have to be by yourself? Do you put on music?

Whedon: I do listen to music. Movie scores, exclusively, because it’s all about mood and nonspecificity. I love the way modern movie scoring is all about nonspecificity. You know, if I shuffled the tracks from Inception, I challenge you to tell me which is which. But  you feel incredibly heightened during all of it. I don’t know what I’m very excited about but I’m very excited. Or worried. Or sad, I’m not sure which, but it’s all happening. And that’s really great. Whereas, you know, your old-school, very theme-specific music, which is the kind I like to actually use in my movies, is useless to writing.

Wired: Can you listen to music with lyrics?

Whedon: Only if it’s super vapid. Very beautiful and super vapid and I’m not listening to it. It’s been like two albums ever, and I don’t even want to say what they are because it’s embarrassing.

Wired: And does it have to be in a specific place, or can you just go somewhere and type?

Whedon: I need to create that space.

Disclosure: I purchased a few tracks from the Inception soundtrack right after reading this. The answer to why I did it is quite simple. There are very few times where I don’t listen to music and if I am writing there is a guarantee that something is playing.

Music helps set the tone and when I do my best writing it is usually accompanied by some sort of soundtrack or song that makes my heart ache or my toes tap. I know, it sounds goofy but that is just how it works.

One of the best parts about being a forty-something is that I don’t have to prove a thing to anyone but myself. That means that I won’t try to reinvent the wheel unless there is a need. I really enjoyed Inception so this was a timing sort of thing for me.

In some ways you could talk about it being a sign from the universe. It was sort of innocuous. Just a little reminder to old Jack about the movie and what it made me think/feel and want to do.

A Blogging Identity Crisis

The 17 long time readers know that I don’t believe that you have to be a niche blogger to be successful, but they also know that my focus and voice have evolved over time. That evolution continues. This is an extended period of growth. I am doing a few things now that are going to impact the future of how I blog. I think they are going to be good. I see positive things coming from it.

I have very few regrets in my life but those I do have are huge. The goal now is avoid making more. The goal now is to do my best to take my shots and if I fail, well I will have tried. It is easier for me to live with the knowledge that I got caught trying to steal home than to say that I was left on base because I waited for someone else to swing the bat.

So Simple A Child Could Figure It Out

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There is a girl in this house that loves that song. It is one of hundreds that she likes to dance to or sing along with. If you spend any time here you have read some of the posts I have written about her.

They have ranged from conversations about whether she could be on Facebook to tales of Daddy/Daughter day. She is daddy’s girl and I am completely in love.

It is hard not to be. I remember when she asked why is daddy crying and how concerned she was about me. She is almost 8 going on 30.

Really my children have been a big part of making sure that I stay grounded. Any time some challenge in my life has come up I have always thought about them and how my decisions would impact their lives.

I Wasn’t Always A Father

It sounds like a silly thing to say because I obviously haven’t always been a father but I have been doing it for so long now it feels like I never was anything else. That is ok with me, I am good with it.

But sometimes I look around and wonder how it is that time passes so quickly. It sounds ridiculous to say that, but it is something that every parent thinks about. You want and wish for a way to stop time for a little while so that these little people stay little for a while longer.

That is not something that you see in The Dudes Group, at least not from what I can tell. I am ok with that too. Have to admit that it is a bit surreal to look at the pictures and the trailer for that flick and realize that I haven’t had kids in diapers in years. Nor have I had a toddler either.

Now I have big kids who ask me what a daddy blogger is and want to know if I write about other things.

The Answer

The answer makes their eyes go a bit glassy. I tell them that I write about many things and that I am working on some ebooks and a “real” book. They ask me to tell them what social media is and I say it is about making friends and doing business. They want to know if that means that I do business with friends and I say sometimes.

I look at their faces and I see that they are ready to talk about something else and that is ok too. I want to know about homework and school, but before I do my daughter tells me that I need to focus on my homework too. She thinks I need to come up a with a different name than daddy blogger because she is concerend someone will call me a booger.

It is kind of silly. I remind her that it is more important to be aware of what names we call ourselves but at the same time I think about what she says. What kind of impression am I making? Is this going to lead to more work or is it going to be seen in ways that don’t lead to additional opportunities.

It is another moment where I think about what kind of blogger am I and what kind of blogger do I want to be.

666 Devilish Ways To Become A Social Media Superstar

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Typewriter

Friends if you want to really get something out of this post you are going to need to listen to Stairway to Heaven…played backwards. If you don’t understand how that corresponds to the headline than you are too young to be reading this post and probably not old enough to use social media.

Dammit, I forgot that social media is a young person’s game. Hell if I ran some stuffy old organization that needed a social media presence I would go out and hire a teenage girl because everyone knows that teenage girls are social media experts, next to mommy bloggers. Oops, I am probably going to be assaulted by angry mommy bloggers now who will tell me that what I just wrote is offensive.

Listen up ladies, dad bloggers have all the power and we don’t take crap from anyone- we give it out. Really.

Ok, now that we got the opening nonsense out of the way let’s talk turkey about how to make social media work for you. I lied when I said that I have 666 devilish ways to become a social media superstar because you don’t need that many.

Really we could boil it down to three but we are not going to hit those yet because there is a fundamental problem that has to be addressed first.

Why Are You Doing This & What Do You Hope To Accomplish?

It sounds obvious but you might be surprised by the number of people/businesses that are in social media because they think they should be and not because they have a plan or goal in mind.

Reminds me of an old line that I hate but I’ll share it because it is applicable. “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.” When you establish a goal you provide yourself with a foundation that you can use to build a plan of action to achieve your goal.

And that my friends brings me to my next point, popularity is not a plan. Want to know why? Watch the video below that my friend Ruth made.

True Power In Social Media

The easiest way to measure true power in social media is very simple. Will people respond to your call to action. What happens if you ask them to click/buy/read/tweet/like something? Will they do it or will the overwhelming majority of them click, surf and move on.

It really doesn’t matter how popular you are if no one responds to your call to action. But like Ruth said, popularity isn’t necessarily the best metric to use to determine success. Comments aren’t currency either.

So my question to you dear reader is simple, why do you blog and what do you hope to accomplish?  Have you established goals for yourself/business? Do you have a plan? What does success look like to you? Money? Community? Actions? New friends?

Share it in the comments and let’s talk about it.

P.S. In the near future I will be publishing my own eBook about blogging/social media where you can find more of my thoughts/ideas on this. Sadly you won’t find the missing 663 devilish ways to become a social media superstar but you will find lots of other cool stuff there.

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