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 January 2013

You Put The Bullet In Your Dreams

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oodnata
Along the Oodnadatta Track, Australia- Picture taken by Jamie Brelsford

My name is Jack and most of you know me as the insouciant dad blogger who teaches his children to live their dreams and not dream their lives. That is not rhetoric or hype, it is what I believe and what I want for them.

Part of it is because I am their father and my job is to help them grow up to become menschen, to be responsible, productive members of society. The other part is because I sometimes wonder if I am responsible for putting a bullet in my own dreams.

I don’t carry many regrets with me but those few that hang around are massive beasts that swim in the darkest depths occasionally surfacing with the goal of making me question and doubt myself.

The Butt Of The Joke

I spent the Summer of 1985 in Israel and it changed my life. I remember watching Live Aid in a pub in Jerusalem, a beer in my hand, friends to the right of me and my girlfriend on my lap.

I was 16 years-old and my parents were 10,000 miles away but I knew I had found a second home and that the benefits of being far away weren’t the only reasons why I felt so comfortable.

Certainly some of it had to do with feeling of alienation so many teenagers have. I wasn’t on the outside looking in, I was a part of something that wanted and needed me as much as I needed it.

So I decided that I was going to try to spend my freshman year of college in Israel. It sounded like a very grown up thing to do, a reasonable and rational way to try to turn a dream into a reality.

I worked hard and was admitted to a special program at a university and made plans to go, but at the last minute had to pull out because the finances weren’t there.

It was hard and it was painful, made all the more so when I found out I became one of the group jokes. My name was on all of the literature, but I wasn’t there.

Things Change and We Adapt

Several years later I have another shot to go. This time it is for my junior year abroad and I am more determined than ever.

It all looks good, but I have a serious girlfriend who is a few years younger than I am. She asks me not to go, says she wants to go with me and wonders if I will wait.

I am an idiot and I say yes.

She’ll break up with me months after the deadline has passed and going has become an option that only exists if I drop out of school.

That is when I know a put a bullet in that dream and pushed it down where it wouldn’t bother me.

It is also when I start my push to become a professional sportswriter. I love writing and I am part of the college newspaper so it seems to me like I have an opportunity.

A Narrow Window

Things at the newspaper move along nicely and I move from staff writer to editor and eventually become the Editor-In-Chief.

It is a great feeling and I am convinced I am on the right track, except I didn’t become a sportswriter.  Won’t bore you with the who, what, where, when,why and how of it–it didn’t happen and I wonder if I am responsible for that.

I wonder if I am not accountable for putting a bullet in that dream. I wonder if maybe I didn’t want it badly enough or if maybe I was afraid to really try.

It is hard to say for certain, but I take some responsibility for it because I have to.

Israel- The Third Time Is The Trick

Several years after graduation I go back to Israel for a business trip and then hang out afterwards for pleasure. Now I am truly a grown up, or so I think of my 25 year-old self.

That feeling I had before is still there and I know I have to do something about it. So I make arrangements to live with a friend in Jerusalem.

He has a couch I’ll sleep on and knows a guy who needs someone to work at his bar. It is not perfect but I figure it will be enough to get me on my feet.

A couple of weeks later I fly home to pack up my apartment and finalize the details of a big move. I tell my girlfriend about my plan and she says she’d move with me.

Two weeks after that we get engaged and 13 months later we are married.

We did go back to Israel together but not to live, graduate school and children came along and plans changed.

That Was Then and This Is Now

December 2004 changed my life but I didn’t recognize it at the time. It was when I wrote two posts that showed me the power of blogging and helped me engage in some course correction.

Those posts came about six months into my blogging career and are among the few from that time that don’t make me cringe when I read them now.

What I didn’t know was how they and blogging would help me understand the difference between what I want and what I need.

Blogging also helped me realize that I am not old now, maybe older, but not too old to run down the dreams I had or to accept that sometimes dreams change and that is ok.

The World’s Greatest Content Marketer Hates Comments

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A pair of homemade sock monkeys.

I am the world’s greatest content marketer and the world’s greatest dad blogger and I hate comments.

Do me a favor and try not to get caught up in the self appointed titles of greatest content marketer and greatest dad blogger because those titles are meaningless. They have the same authority as the lists that some media organizations compile of the top 50 or 100 Sock Monkeys who blog.

Heck, it is an insult to hard working sock monkeys everywhere to compare their work to some of the bloggers on these lists, not to mention a bunch of other big names. Don’t ask me to name names either because it won’t happen.

Not interested in a flame war with people who can’t write better than Sock Monkeys.

Forget About The Sock Monkeys

This post was going to be called Is Triberr Divisive but I stumbled across a post at Mark Schaefer’s place called Social media “engagement” is not a strategy and decided to go in a different direction.

It is a very smart piece and it deserves to be read. If you are not able to get over there then read this:

“Let’s not forget that all that engagement comes at a cost!  We have to be careful that we’re ready to staff-up to effectively meet those demands. And for some companies, that may not be a good business decision.

Let me give you a micro-example. Last week I wrote a blog post that had more than 100 comments.  As a small business owner, if I had this level of engagement every day, I would not have time to work on the consulting and teaching activities that feed my family.

Now if I really wanted to, I could pump up this level of engagement all the time … but it would be foolhardy for me to do so. I need to strike the proper balance of commercial activities across my customer base that optimize my business results. In fact, I purposely plan my blog postings to DEPRESS engagement on days when I don’t have the time to properly handle it.

In other words, if you’re not careful, you can talk yourself broke.”

Smart businesses work hard to build relationships with their prospective and existing customers. One of the ways they do it is through creating channels that funnel conversation towards places where they have an active presence.

But once you open that door you have to prepared to the comments, calls, emails and visitors that come by to visit.

No one wants to be ignored and if you don’t respond in a timely basis you will alienate people and make them feel like you are ignoring them.

The beauty of our instant gratification society is that our collective attention spans are shrinking so our willingness to wait isn’t what it used to be.

I Have A Love/Hate Relationship With Comments

Remember me, the self proclaimed World’s Greatest Content Marketer?  I have a love/hate relationship with comments. Blog comments are n0t currency but many people use them as such. It is how they measure their success but it is a funny sort of metric to use.

That questions and others that are related to it are responsible for posts like What is the value of a comment? and  Can You Build Community Without Comments?

Hell, sometimes I think the comments are the reason why some bloggers have gone off of the deep end. Blogging is a two way street and when you start to view your readers as groupies and sycophants you are headed to that place Yoda referred to as The Dark Side.

Forgive the tangent, but it irks me to no end that my kids view Darth Vader as being some sort of sympathetic figure.

He used to be scary. He used to be the icon of evil and now since Lucas messed with my childhood he is not the same.

It makes me wonder if Lucas spent too much time reading all of the positive comments and not enough time paying attention to the criticism.

What I really want to see in a comment section is a conversation that we can learn from. I don’t mind banter because that can help build community, but if all we ever see is praise I begin to wonder.

Blogging Questions, Concerns and Ideas

I have to get some shut eye so that I can try to stay a step ahead of the sock monkeys but before I go I want to state again that Writing Is Not The Hardest Part Of Blogging and that blogging/social media isn’t free.

Our time is worth something and that is part of why I like mixing up the posts here. It is not just to maintain interest or because I love to write but because posts like this one stimulate conversation that builds community and educates.

I like learning and I think many of you do too.

The floor is open. Would love to hear your thoughts.

Life’s Big Wheel of Color

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Life’s Big Wheel of Color grabbed my by the collar Friday and shook me, or at least it tried to.

Things are happening, change is in motion and that big wheel of color flashed blue, black, red, green, orange and a handful of others that women have names for and men can’t identify.

Maybe that is because we focus on the simple and clear–that is red, blue, green and not magenta, turquoise or princess plumb. Heck if I wrote the marketing materials for a paint manufacturer I could come up with a bunch of titles, but that is not what this is about.

That big wheel of color flashed because signs and symbols were being pushed at me and the unmistakable feeling that I am supposed to pay attention to…now.

I have a rough relationship with signs and symbols and the idea that the universe is pushing me a certain way.  There are explanations that make sense to me and the concept of free will as it applies here is something I am well aware of.

There are moments where I don’t believe in any thing other than what I know and others where I shrug my shoulders and accept that I can’t explain it all.

But I do know that I am grounded and that though storms may follow where I walk I was built to go through them and come out the other side. When I don’t spend all of my energy fighting and just go with it things work out.

That big wheel of color is spinning again.

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  • This was my 5 minute Stream of Consciousness Sunday post. It’s five minutes of your time and a
    brain dump. Want to try it? Here are the rules…
  • Set a timer and write for 5 minutes.
    Write an intro to the post if you want but don’t edit the post. No proofreading or spellchecking.
    This is writing in the raw.
    Publish it somewhere. Anywhere. The back door to your blog if you want. But make it
    accessible.
    Add the Stream of Consciousness Sunday badge to your post (in the sidebar). .
    Link up your post below.
    Visit your fellow bloggers and show some love.

You Still Don’t Need A Niche To Be A Successful Blogger

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Six months ago I shared a few words about why you don’t need a niche to be a successful blogger and they are all still true.

Of course success in blogging is subjective so we could argue that you can’t determine whether you have achieved it without first defining what it is.

The 2013 Blogging Plan

If you are among the long time readers you know that I have always covered a variety of topics here. I have done so because it has helped prevent boredom and because it has been a wonderful tool I have used to improve my writing.

That is because as a writer I don’t want to pigeonhole myself as the guy who can only write about one topic and in one voice.

It also works for me because I have seen continual growth in traffic and page views and that experience is a big part of why I say you don’t need a niche in blogging.

What Do You Need To Be Successful

If you are a data junkie you probably want more than just my word as proof that blogging without a niche works. If it makes you feel better I can prepare a case study or throw some numbers into a spreadsheet but since they aren’t coming from a third party you should still question them.

Or you can accept my word as being valid. I am not charging you to read these words or asking you to pay for anything.

However I will ask you to share this post, sign up for my newsletter and become a fan of my Facebook page. 😉

On a serious note what you need to be successful in blogging is the willingness to instill passion and personality into your posts and the ability to sustain your effort for the long haul.

It is a marathon and not a sprint.

What you need to be successful is to not be afraid to experiment and to try things out.

It Doesn’t Have To Be Linear

Some may disagree but your content doesn’t always have to be linear or follow any sort of chronological order.  As long as it is constructed in such a way that readers can follow and understand you can play with things a bit.

I like mixing it up a bit because it works for me and because the feedback has been mostly positive. Feedback is important because you need to be cognizant of what makes your readers happy but it always has to be measured against your happiness as a writer.

It is tied into the push/pull of blogging and social media in general.

People power social media and readers help power our blogs but if you don’t love this thing you just won’t last. If you don’t get excited about banging out more posts and engaging with the very fine folks you find around these parts you will have an issue.

Blogging takes work, even for those of us who love doing it.

There are good days and there are bad days mixed in between the other days. Not every post is going to be a home run but if you never swing the bat you never get on base either.

Stay tuned to this bat channel, there is much more to come.

One Big Reason Not To Waste Time

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temps bleu - blue time

I could hear the echo of my father’s voice inside my head, “Boys don’t ever hit girls.”

He ignored my protests and told me he didn’t care what my sister had done. It didn’t matter if she hit me first or what she used. I was a boy. We weren’t allowed to fight back that way.

I told him again it wasn’t fair and he shrugged his shoulders at me. “We are bigger and stronger. Use your words to settle things. They will.”

He was right and so was I. Thirty-seven years ago they didn’t fight fair and they still don’t now.

I suppose the big difference between then and now is that it was much easier as a young boy to look at them as “annoying people” whose sole purpose was to bother boys.

Puberty changed all that. Those “annoying people” cast a magic spell on me and suddenly I went from not noticing any of them to having trouble focusing in school.

Hormonal overdrive and young love kept me from recognizing the kind of trouble that lack of focus could get you into.

But I found out.

Her name was Tammy. She was a tall blonde with bright green eyes and an electric smile. At 14 she was two or three inches taller than I was and quick to lord it over me.

She spent our freshman year of high school doing her best to tease and torment me. I tried to give it back to her and almost got my head taken off.

I don’t remember exactly what I said but I remember she was angry. When I told her she was acting like my sister she lost it. She stopped talking to me. When we passed each other in the halls she just looked through me, it was like I didn’t exist.

You would think that I would have appreciated the respite from the teasing and the incessant comments about my height, but I didn’t.

We didn’t speak again until November of the following year and to this day I can’t tell you if she even noticed, but I did.

Her refusal to speak made me so angry that I walked over to her. “You aren’t as special as you think you are!”

She just laughed, “look who finally grew.”

Until she mentioned it I hadn’t noticed that I was finally taller than she was.

I wanted to yell at her again but that laughter and the smile that accompanied it took the fight right out of me.

We went on our first date two weeks later and three months after that we lost our virginity in her aunt’s pool house.

It was young love and a healthy dose of young lust.

Her father almost put the fear of god into us. He came home early one day and surprised us.

We heard him and I tried to jump out of bed, but Tammy was fearless. She told me to relax and said there was plenty of time.

That became our line and our little joke. Life was filled with plenty of time and much laughter.

When it came time to go to college we ended up attending different universities. Neither one of us was worried about our relationship. We thought it was strong enough to survive anything, but we were wrong.

I don’t know when she slept with him or how many times she did but I know it happened. I wasn’t blameless either.

The girl I hooked up with was just as tall as Tammy and had those long legs that I loved, except she was a brunette with dark eyes. The moment I kissed her I knew that things had to go farther and that something else was dying, but hormones don’t care about relationships.

Within six months or so we had both acknowledged that it was time to go our separate ways.

It was painful but also somewhat exhilarating. Tammy and I had done almost everything a couple could do together and I was excited to be with other women.

That 18 year-old boy felt like a kid in a candy shop and for a while I really enjoyed it, but I noticed very quickly that these girls didn’t respond like Tammy did.

She would do anything and they wouldn’t. Hindsight makes it easy to recognize that love was the difference but that kid didn’t know it.

By that time Tammy and I rarely spoke and if we did we usually found ourselves fighting but it wasn’t like those days in high school.

Eventually we just stopped talking.

Five years passed and then I ran into her at a New Year’s Eve party. At midnight we kissed and it was like no time had passed.

Thirty-five minutes later we walked into my apartment and stayed there for three days.

Two days later she left for a two year Peace Corps assignment in Africa. When she kissed me goodbye she said she loved me, laughed and told me not to worry because there was plenty of time.

She never wrote me.

Twenty-five years passed and the silence continued. We were just a memory.

Last week there was a knock at the door and I saw a beautiful blonde standing on my porch. It was like being transported in time, there was my Tammy, except it wasn’t.

She said her name was Heather and asked to come inside.

“My mom said if something happened to her I should find you. Her name was Tammy and I think you might be my dad.”

“What do you mean her name was Tammy?”

Her eyes filled with tears and so did mine. I guess we never did have plenty of time.

(This story is fiction and it originally ran over here. During 2013 you can expect to continue to find a mix of posts here dealing with business, marketing, social media, dad blogging and fiction)

One Slip And The World Changes

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Dad and I order two cups of coffee, his small, mine large. He tells me that one day my metabolism won’t work quite so efficiently and that my body might not appreciate all that caffeine I am injecting into it. I laugh and tell him that “I hope I die before I get old.” He nods his head. I don’t know if he gets the reference, music isn’t his thing.

For a few minutes we talk about my new job and I tell him that I miss having vacations. He laughs and tells me that I better get used to it, college is over. We talk about this and that and he mentions that he wants to take mom on a trip to Europe, says that as soon as my sisters are out of the house they’ll start traveling.
I nod my head and excuse myself to hit the john.

Dad makes a crack about me aging before his eyes, not even a full cup of Joe and I am running to the bathroom. I am only in there a minute but it is one that will haunt me forever.

When I come back out I see a man pointing a gun at dad. Stringy hair, dirty jacket and torn cargo pants with a gun. His back is to me. Dad never looks away from the man, but I know he knows I am there.

Dad is seated and I am worried about what might happen. I can’t stand still. Two quick steps and I’m airborne. I slam into him and we hit the ground.

Twenty some years later I’m seated in the same donut shop, except this time I am in uniform. The kid I am training is in the same john I was in the day of. One day I might tell him why donuts make me cranky, but not today. He hasn’t earned the right to know.

One moment in time changed everything for me and nothing will ever be the same.

That is a short excerpt from this piece here.

One of my ongoing goals is to continue to work on becoming a better writer. One of the ways I am trying to do so is to continue to write about different topics and to use different voices.

If you like my fiction and are interested in reading more let me know and I will share some more with you.