Successful Blog

Get Enough Sand

by

Through an Hourglass

hourglass

People once used sand to mark time in an hourglass.

Marking time doesn’t seem to be living.
An hourglass hardly seems joyful.

Where I grew up the sand is rich, white, and unique. Its rounded grains of clear colorless quartz, diamond-like in hardness, are pure silica (silicon dioxide) uncontaminated by clay, loam, iron compounds, or other foreign substances.

White silica is sand for windows and marbles. As kids, it was cool to see the local factory logo on every car window in the nation. It was also cool to grab rejects behind the marble factory — flat disks of colored glass are fascinating to any kid not yet age 10.

Sometimes we wondered how tiny salt-like grains could become clear windows and colorful marbles. Most times we never thought about it at all.

The local dairy built a recreational lake on their property. They floored and bordered it with the pure white, clean, clean sand . . . Swimming lessons, dates, beach parties, even weddings took place there. Famous rock bands played there while we danced by the lake.

We had more than our share of sand in our shoes and our hair. That fact was pointed out nearly every time we walked within 20 feet of an adult.

Sand, grit, guts, gumption, moxie . . . We found those vibrant synonyms in a book in high school — the one with the metaphors. The same words might describe a well-lived life.

Where I come from the sand is unique.
I bet it’s unique where you come from too.
What if we take the sand out of the hourglass this weekend?

Get enough sand and we’ve got a beach.

Ever built a castle?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

What Parts of Your History Are You?

by

We Are Who We Were

Missing_brick_by_sxc.hu

When I first came to blogging, I had decided to write my way into a new career. I was lucky enough to have a background that such things might be possible. So I set off with the metaphorical wind in my sails. It was working well for quite some while.

I was sure. I was certain. I put myself out there. I brought my “beginner’s mind” to the situation. I brought my best thinking to the new problems that I eagerly came to conquer and solve. It was refreshing, invigorating. I was in the game again. At least I thought so.

Then I woke up.

I realized something was missing, more than something — whole parts of my skillset, my experience, and my history. I wasn’t talking about or using what had taken me a career to acquire. When I left my old situation, I left behind useful parts of me.

Twice in the last week, I’ve had a conversation with people who’ve done the same thing I did — walked away from talents or skills when they walked away from a situation that no longer gave them room to grow.

An intelligent someone said last night, “All of this time I’ve been totally missing what I love to do.”

Sometimes life is so much about learning and building that we totally miss the hole in the wall. We forget that we build our future on what we’ve learned and accomplished before. Our skills and talents become part of who we’ve always been and who we are.

Our experience is the mortar that holds us together. Our history is the glue that connects us to each other. Fashion and buzz words fade away. Memories and learning are what remain.

I’m a teacher. I’m a writer. Try as I might to do other, in some way, those are what I’ll always be.

What parts of your history are you?

–ME “Liz” Strauss

The Humanity in Unnatural Spaces

by

Not People Places

McCormackPlace_South_by_Liz_Strauss

Yesterday while people were meeting. I went walking to find something worth a photograph. I thought maybe I’d find something inspiring, something motivating. I was hoping for soft lines and curves set there by nature. Instead what I found were the hard lines and curves of concrete.

Nature had no hand these spaces. People hands had done the making.

As I walked through them, long before the cars, buses, and foot traffic, I recognized that, in their own way, the lines and curves came to gether with the light to make something not unpleasant, almost cheerful and oddly elegant. A thoughtful designer saw to it that the frontmost walls let in the natural light while blocking the street scene and its noises. I was grateful that the committee who approved the work had kept the touch of deep blue relief that was the ceiling.

As I waited, I imagined the space filled with people. The simplicity of the scene became chaotic and stressful with the movement, noise, and echoes.

Try as we might, humans don’t seem to make peaceful spaces for people outside the high ceilings of a place of worship, a library, or a space filled with a loving fmaily.

Have you found humanity in other places not made by nature?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

Patterns of Bad Social Media Behaviors

by

In my email this week was a leadership statement from Vincent Wright, Social Media Consultant, man I admire. If you’re on MyBlogLog or Twitter, you may have met him. If you haven’t yet, look for him. You’ll know you’ve found the Wright guy when you see his Wright hand avatar over there.

Wright_hand

Bad Social Media Teachers
by Guest Writer Vincent Wright

In each social media environment, there are patterns of behavior.

There are good patterns of behavior.

There are bad patterns of behavior.

Social media owners, moderators, and group participants recognize both the good and bad patterns of behavior.

Those who seek to use social media platforms for their intended usage, enjoy witnessing those who use social media the right way.

Those who seek a more self-centered purpose — even to the detriment of the platforms they are on — use social media poorly, and jeopardize the platform for all users.

The first group could be called social media environmentalists.

The second group could be called a whole bunch of names — none worthy of sharing with a “PG 13” audience.

But, think about this: patterns of behavior don’t just come into existence without a cause, without a stimulus.

Someone must conceive, create, and cause the propagation of both the good and the bad behaviors we see.

If we see what I call “profile stamping” on Ning, where a member will go to dozens upon dozens of profiles and stamp the same banal message with the same graphic over and over and over, some bad social media teacher taught them to do that.

If we see what I call ” ‘hi’ stamping” on Yahoo Groups, where hundreds of members attempt to sign up for private, moderated groups just by saying, “Hi”, some bad social media teacher taught them to do that.

If we see what I call “toll boothing “ on Linkedin, where some “enterprising” Linkedin member wants to charge you a fee for a service that is free, some bad social media teacher taught them to do that.

If we see what I call “invitationitis” rampant on any number of social media platforms, where people without any modicum of self-control seem to indiscriminately invite just for the heck of inviting, some bad social media teacher taught them to do that.

There is no shortage of other bad social media behavior we could add to the above list – feel free to add yours – but, I love that the word “teach” literally means “to show”. So, if someone is showing you bad social media behavior then, they are bad social media teachers.

And this, too: since the word teach means to show, what are you teaching those who are watching what you’re showing them on these social media platforms?

Vincent Wright
Social Media Consultant
Twitter.com/VincentWright | Linkedin.com/in/VincentWright |
MyLinkingPowerForum.com | MyVirtualPowerForum.com | MyLinkedinPowerForum.com
My Virtual Power Forum on Li Groups | http://www.linkedin.com/e/gis/732357 |
________________

Vincent,
This is going to run while I’m gone to BlogWorld. I agree with the heart and hope in this message. I bet that some are “self-taught” social media experts who are now teaching others to do these nasty things.

Bet the folks who read this have more bad social media practices.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

If You’re Going to Expect Things . . .

by

Shining Star by NASA

My dad used to say said, “If you’re going to expect things, expect most things from yourself first. If you’re going to be a star, shine the brightest. If you’re going to be a teacher, own the school.”

When I was young I’d try to correct him, pointing out that teachers don’t usually own the school. He’d have none of my argument. He’d just repeat the entire thing again.

“If you’re going to expect things, expect most things from yourself first. If you’re going to be a star, shine the brightest. If you’re going to be a teacher, own the school.”

It’s taken me most of my life to get close to understanding what he meant or at least I’ve found my own meaning, which seems to be what he was after.

I have few expectations. What I have are much wrapped up in the words, “be nice.”

I don’t expect the world to change just to suit me. It hasn’t done so up to now. I don’t suppose it will.

Expectations frame the future with an illusion of control. No wonder his advice was to expect most things from me.

I’m still thinking on this one. I expect I will be for a while longer.

What did you expect this would be?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

image: NASA photo

What Will We Be When the Social Media Market Grows Up?

by

Attention Is Not a New Idea

Creativity at Work

Thanks to everyone who participated in yesterday’s discussion of Creativity with a Capital C as described by the criteria set out by Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who also wrote Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. As I enjoy rereading this favorite in this new time, I hope you’ll stay with me.

Unlike instinct, learning must be acquired by every new person again and again. As a culture gains more information, individuals must pay more attention or focus in on narrower domains of study. As a culture gets more complex subdomains become too huge for one person to assimilate.The more mature the culture, the more it favors specialized knowledge.

Csikszentmihalyi points out that

Nobody knows who last Renaissance man really was, but sometime after Leonardo da Vinci it became impossible to learn enough about all of the arts and sciences to be an expert in more than a small fraction of them. Domains have split into subdomains, and a mathematician who has mastered algebra may not know much about number theory, combinatorix, topology — and vice versa. . . . now all of these special skills tend to be acquired by different people.

Therefore it follows that as culture evolves, specialized knowledge will be favored over generalized knowledge.

Consider three people — a community builder, an event planner, and a social media manager. The first two need to focus their attention on studying one thing. Their jobs are defined and somewhat narrow. The social media manager must study both of those areas plus many others.

We need to master a domain before we can innovate or create new ideas. As domains add more information, experts are forced deeper into narrower bits.

Mature markets form niches — it’s the natural evolution. Limited attention limits our options. To know anything well we must focus on less.

At the moment, the social media market is young and not well understood. Relatively little information is available. As more information is added to the common pool, it becomes less possible for one person to be fluent in all of it.

Do you see social media domain splitting? Are social networking sites becoming more specialized? What we will be when the social media market grows up?

I wonder.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!