I don’t know exactly what he did.

At the last minute and 2 weeks before my last semester of college, the friend who had gotten me the cushy and sweetly paid internship position that awaited me where he also worked, got fired from said employment…

Apparently for something severe enough to also “fire me” from my upcoming position. I found myself in a pickle.

Left with 2 weeks until the start of the semester, the same time until when my internship was supposed to start and… no internship. And no prospects either.

Emailing my advisor, more than a little unhappy…

When kids evolve from talking to progressively learning the English language, you are quickly reminded how many things in it don’t quite make sense.

Parenthood has a way of reminding and showing some other things don’t quite make sense either, sometimes in humorous ways.

Here are 8 amusing times learning was hard for Hannah, my 4.5 year old, first born of three…

Not Everything Is Literal

Reading her the “Bug Book”…

“Why is it called a dung beetle?” she asks.

“Because they are beetles and they roll dung which is another word for poop,” I respond.

“What is that one called?” she points to…

Malcolm Gladwell, a journalist and writer best known for unique perspectives on popular culture including:

How social epidemics result from a combination of seemingly arbitrary contextual details (“The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference”). Common characteristics in what makes one successful (“Outliers: The Story of Success”). How perceived disadvantages are actually advantages (“David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants”)

What follows is a “quotes only” (a la Esquire’s “What I’ve Learned”) account of quote notes I took in consuming his MasterClass (hence my direct words in italics to differentiate).

Here’s what you’ll…

Being far, far overdue for actually organizing and categorizing my hundreds of books into a bookshelf, obviously so I could take myriad #shelfies…

…but also because I had gotten full bore back into reading, thus buying more books.

But also, I was having more and more trouble finding books that I was looking for as they were in multiple locations and unable to find some altogether.

This pursuit of bookshelf organizing, turns out to be quite the catalyst.

Bookshelf Breakthroughs

AKA The Quest For a Perfect “Shelfie” Ah-Ha’s

There were multiple initial discoveries as I set forth on the project of aggregating all the books and organizing them into their…

“Can I be blunt of this subject? If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.”
- Stephen King “On Writing”

And if you don’t have the tools or the ability to write, getting your message out and effective content marketing will be significantly harder, if not impossible.

And if you can’t get your message out nor have effective content marketing, you can’t market in 2020/21.

And if you can’t market, whether yourself or your business in 2020/21, that is problematic in the least.

You need reading for writing…

Closing out each year, as the unofficial (and not self-titled) “King of Continuing Education,” I do a short (historically anyway) end-of-the-year recap and then share my favorite books, courses attended, and continuing education that I consumed that year.

This year there is a little bit more to recap.

Year In Review

Not sure anyone could have predicted this past year. Except post-apocalyptic fiction writers with a knack for conspiracy theory, I suppose.

But even then, that’s a stretch.

It’s taken me a bit of time to collect these initial thoughts as close to succinctly as possible, but my adult coloring book describes it…