I don’t know what’s scarier — the carefully crafted, excellent-but-unattainable dialogue you find in great TV writing, or the base, gross, unintelligible speech you can observe in reality television. Either way, I think how we speak matters more than our art tends to suggest.
Archives for July 2014
Stubbornness as an Asset
There is a heritage of stubbornness among my family — both sides, in fact. My wife has a similar heritage. It is something we fight against at times, when it’s not to our benefit. But, it’s also something that works in our favor much of the time.
I saw this at work in the life of my daughter recently. We’d been “fighting” about thumb-sucking. We’d gotten down to just at night time, but I didn’t see a clear path to stopping that practice.
Then, my daughter decided to be interested in finger nail polish. At first it was,”When you stop sucking your thumb at night, we’ll paint your nails.”
“Okay, I won’t suck my thumb,” she’d reply. Then, that night, she’d happily suck her thumb.
It went that way for a couple of weeks. Then, she got serious one day. And all that day, she talked about not sucking her thumb. And that night, whenever we checked on her (frequently, I might add,) she wasn’t sucking her thumb.
She wanted her fingernails painted, dang it. So, she did what she needed to do. And she won.
I think that heritage of stubbornness, as dangerous as it can be, is also a gift.
Happy Birthday
The United States of America. I live here. You aren’t perfect, but you’re a good place to live. Thanks for having me, eh. Try some butter tarts. You’ll be amazed.
A thing you'll never see
I spent a good while looking at business related stock photography for a presentation. I never found a chart that shows diminishing results. Apparently there’s no call for that. You bury that in 9 point arial somewhere in the back of the corporate report. Pretty graphics are used to show positive results. Lesson learned.