Can Someone Get Something from Being Nothing?

Look Up, Look at Someone Else

sad_man_by_ the _water

Yesterday I met someone who was nothing.

He wore his nothingness like a badge. It was his role, his definition of himself. He had tied himself too closely to “things” and a company he lost years ago. Now they were lost and he was nothing.

He argued for the reasons that his days held nothing, that he could do nothing, that nothing suited him.

His reasons were well-thought and often repeated. They listed his inability to compete with other people and things outside of him. They outlined every subject about which he couldn’t care and every task at which he was inept.

As time and conversation passed, it became clear that he planned on staying exactly where he was. Nothing got him something. Was that “something” attention or a reason not to try anymore? Maybe it was the opportunity to talk about the past?

Sane humans don’t stay in situations that don’t pay off. In some way we’re getting something. We always buy into the “contract” of what we’re doing and where we are.

When things truly aren’t working, we get determined. We change the situation.

Yeah we get something from being nothing, but when being nothing gets to be a problem, we become the something we could have been all along.

Ever met someone who got something from being nothing?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

Moving Forward and Standing Still . . .

I’m pleased to announce that

. . . I’m moving to a new server!
Thank you to FastServers, Inc a Division of Layered Tech for their fabulous service in the process of a complicated move from behind several walls out to a new home.

We’ll need to take a break while things propagate. Then this blog will loading faster and responding like a new car. And I’ll have my emoticons back. 🙂

moving_to_a_new_server_be_back_soon

Meanwhile, In Case You Missed Them . . .

A few of my recent favorites to read while the move is taking place.

For Inspiration and Writing Fuel

Change the World: One World-Sized Idea

The Top 10 Ways to Start Living Your Life

Can You Be Brave and Vulnerable?

Reasons to Write at Night and When the Sun Is Rising

How to Make Everyone and Everything Nicer Without Lifting a Finger

How to Make Your Dream Come True — Thought, Strategy, Action

On Social Media and Communicating Person to Person

Social Networking: Online Tridimensional Conversation

Mind if I Ask Your Network to Help Me Beat Your Car with a Sledgehammer?

Social Networking in the World of Life

Social Networking: How to Keep True Direction Down Trails of Connections

Social Networking: Make It Imperfectly Human for Me

Looking forward to seeing you soon!
I’ll be back with a new list of SOBs on Saturday.

Can’t wait to get back to you.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!
Image: sxc.hu

Social Anchors that Link Us Together

Social Media Can Be Words

I've been thinking . . .

about connections. Earlier this year I had a conversation, tossing questions and answers with a person I just met.

Cheryl asked, “What are you proud of?”

Plenty of events rose before me, and faded gracefully back again. None of them what I might take pride in. This one owing to my child’s work. That one owing to a team’s participation. The other being a serendipitious aligning of the stars.

Proud feels like approving. Even when I feel proud just know someone, word often don’t say . . . I don’t want raising folks up to seem like putting them lower.

I didn’t know . . .

I replied, “I have an unusual relationship the word proud. I don’t see things quite that way.” I explained as best I could.

She said, “I like the way you think about that.”

Funny how words like that, words that scare ya in some way can turn out to become an important– an anchor — something that holds and ties you to a person and a moment in time.

It was an ordinary day — a day without a parade or ceremony. Someone who knew me wrote the proud word in the comment box. He put it there where people could see it. It was a simple statement.

“Fiercely proud.”

We were two Internet people who’d never been in the same room. He had trouble with the proud word too. He said, “It sounds weird to say.”

Can I tell you what that meant?

It was a link that worked in both directions.

I was fiercely proud of him too.

Those words were a social anchor — a link, a connection, a relationship on the Internet — only this one was between humans not sites. They placed us and a moment in time forever together on the same thought, like the star rising in the photo below.

star rising

Links hold us together. Some can last forever or as long as a star.

Do you have a social anchor — words that reflect a human relationship link you found on the Internet? Would you tell me the story?

If you leave your story, we’ll be linked in yet another way.

Liz's Signature