The Plateau: Social Media

“Many a hand has scaled the grand old face of the plateau. Some belong to strangers and some to folks you know…”

“Plateau” by The Meat Puppets, Meat Puppets II

Social media has become much more than it was ever meant to be, and to that end – it’s a problem.

What was supposed to be a place where we could check in, check out, and see updates from our family and friends – has become a battleground of opinions where people are talking AT one another instead of TO one another.

Twitter was a shit show from the get go, although Facebook has taken the cake in terms of being the platform for drama, doom, and gloom. But that doesn’t mean that, that ethos hasn’t trickled over to instagram – where people have found ways to argue over pictures. LinkedIn has some flare-ups from time to time, but it’s still the professional platform of choice – and anything else out there is probably full of Busch League brawling just the same.

I won’t get into what we’re actually sharing on these platforms, behind the scenes, because we all agreed to it; one way or another – but yeah, that’s pretty shitty too. The only solace being that the targeted ads remind us of the stuff we want to buy on Amazon.

(Deep Sigh)

So, for me – social media has reached its plateau: it can’t get any better, but it will get a whole lot worse. And, I know I am not alone in this proclamation.

Slowly but surely, friends and family we’re logging on less and less. The truly committed were still commenting and liking my posts, but in all reality – a lot of the attention coming my way has been from people in the outer circle; which is fine – but there’s something to say about what to do when the people in your inner-circle aren’t there anymore.

For Facebook, the obvious answer is to branch out and argue with people.

I’m not completely jaded, however. I still enjoy Instagram because I love taking pictures and sharing them. But, even there, the want for likes and follows has been whittled down to an app that lets me edit and post my pictures, in lieu of a picture book that sits on a shelf.

A good friend recently said “Man, you sure post a lot of pictures on social media – but you don’t share anything with me anymore.” And he was right – moments and memories – that we used to trade off as part of our relationship – became public fodder; I lost my balance and social media won.

That hit home.
It made me pivot.
If I had to get personal about it, it may have put the sparkle back into who we are as friends.

Anyway…

What could make this bigger and weirder is that I made a living off of social media and I still work with it, on a professional level, today. But I have been able to catch myself from falling and have compartmentalized how I use social media on a business level so that it doesn’t interfere with my personal life.

Fact is – social media is the strongest tool in marketing and business right now. You can’t succeed in business without it. It’s only when you compare it to your life when you realize that it’s something of a cesspool.

Overall, and I am going to pick on Facebook here for a minute, social media only gives us back what we put into it. Who and what we like and follow are what we see on our pages and streams, ultimately. So we’re partly to blame for sure. But there’s more to it than that. I mean, how much time do we actually spend on FB, IG, TWTR, ETC?

It’s become the new Worldwide Pastime.

We sit there and stare into the glow, scrolling through things we didn’t know we needed to know and engaging in conversations and situations that we could save ourselves a lot of time and stress if we just didn’t.

Who needs action when you got words?

“Plateau” by The Meat Puppets, Meat Puppets II

It’s creating a society of passive aggressive people who feel empowered because they can throttle someone in a comment or a post without having to deal directly with them – what’s worse is that it’s replaced traditional news outlets and acts as a conduit for misinformation.

And I was susceptible to it from time to time; lowering my standards and getting down in the weed to argue with perfect strangers for ZERO gain in life. Heck, I still am – even in admitting this.

Like I said, it’s now a battleground…

Okay, so maybe it’s really just Facebook and Twitter! Maybe we can fix Instagram as long as we stick to pictures and hash tags?

Sigh.

Either way, I don’t believe any of it is going to get better. There’s no evolution from here.

It’s stagnant and I am bored.

So are most of you.

In Brief: Branding

In my real life, I engineer content – strategically – in order to create awareness for a brand or a brand’s endeavour. I work with companies to map out their journey by getting their widget and their message out in front of the crowd to help them take critical steps towards their success.

So, I wanted to take a minute and talk about branding, brand awareness, and the eventual need to rebrand. It’s a big cycle with no clear schedule that eventually charts a course that keeps your brand going.

Now there’s a million people out there writing about what I am about to write about – so keep in mind that this is just one opinion, based off of years of marketing, anticipating the changes, and adapting. I am by no means an expert – I just have experience.

Alright, this is going to go quick – buckle up:

BRANDING Right off the bat: you cannot be successful if your brand isn’t an extension of your ethos. There is no “fake it until you make it” equation in the marketing world. You’re either it, or you’re not. And if you’re trying to be it – and you’re not really it – the clock is ticking on your brand.

I’m not going to get into the specifics of building your brand here, but introducing your brand and creating that first impression – is actually really easy. You need to find where you fit in, and find a place to set up shop and share your dream. As long as you’re authentic and you keep pushing the envelope – staying in front of people – in their feeds and in their faces – you’re going to get where you want to be.

How do you do that? Brand Awareness.

BRAND AWARENESS We are living in the right time – in modern times – for creating awareness for your brand. Social Media has allowed for the development and growth of many new and interesting brands – most of whom are selling similar ideas. The downfall to that is that you NEED social media to be a success. So, if you’re not into social media, find someone who is and get them on your team.

That said, there’s a lot to say about good, old fashioned, boots on the ground marketing – hitting up trade shows, seminars, markets, colleges and the parking lot at your local liquor store can all be avenues that help you cement your foundation. Then, when you couple the power of platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn with that kind of grassroots marketing – you can’t fail (if you have a good product and you believe in it).

However, everything plateaus. It could happen in a year, or it can happen in a decade, but eventually your brand will become commonplace and you’ll need to jumpstart your viability.

That’s when you rebrand.

REBRANDING When you set out to create a brand, you’re on a path – you have a mission to sell something, physically or allegorically – and it’s an extension of your mindset. However, over time, as you get a feel for your audience and clientele, there may be a shift in your approach – or a broadening of your scope – and it will only be to your benefit to address that evolution.

Rebranding can be both inward facing and outward facing. It can be a seamless change or it can be a big todo – but the wonderful thing about taking this kind of leap is that it is an opportunity that allows you to share or reshare your mission statement: your brand and why it exists.

Rebranding gets you out in front of people and amplifies your relevance by reminding people that you’re out here.

Rebranding also opens the door to new audiences who may not have heard of you before. Some people do this through a logo and a major social media campaign – but it’s also the perfect time to update and modify your mission statement – if need be.

Either way, you’re creating awareness through modification and that, my friends, is organic growth. You’re guaranteed to see a spike in your success – after that, it’s up to you to figure out how to maintain it.

WOW!

That was awesome – I just shotgunned out that brain dump – actually as a preparation for an upcoming meeting. Literally – while eating lunch and making sure my kids are doing their schoolwork.

That said…

There’s a bunch of stuff I can go into depth on, and if you reach out – I gladly will. But for now, I think this summarizes the life cycle of a brand, any brand, anywhere.

It’s all about moving forward and staying in focus out there. If you’ve got an idea, chances are there’s something that resembles it already out there. Flipside to that is your idea may already be on the market and someone else will come up with something similar to it. You have to keep moving the pin to stay relative.

Adapt.
Pivot.
Stay relevant.

If you want to see your dream come true, you just need to pay attention.

Know your market.
Know your audience.
Keep your eye out for anything that makes your heart beat faster.
Don’t be afraid to upset the apple cart to send your dream into orbit.

Fiddleheads (or lack there of…)

There’s a few specific areas on the mountain where you’re guaranteed to find your fill of fiddleheads this time of year.

They pop up from beneath the leaves under the canopies about three weeks after the peepers make their presence known.

I say this with confidence as I’ve been harvesting fiddleheads this time of year, every year, for the past fifteen years.

Yet today, I leave empty handed after mulling around for a mile, swatting away newborn gnats and other flying foragers of flesh.

I could have collected quite an impressive amount of Scapes, but they’re not really my thing. And though it’s not the end of days for me, I’m still a little baffled as to why these annual clockwork crops have yet to show.

Suffice to say, this is an apropos moment where I could say “suffice to say..”  but there’s really not one concrete thing that I can pin their absence to.

It certainly wasn’t the few hours of winter the other day that kept them from curling up. If it was – the Scapes would have been the first to retreat – as they are comparatively less hardy. Additionally, there wouldn’t be a valley of Trout Lillies, and I most certainly wouldn’t have seen a small collection of Dutchman’s Breeches hiding in plain site.

And how about that singular Bloodroot holding it down for others to sprout?

Anyway..

It’s just an anomaly; an off year.

Either way, I caught a good couple of miles of mixed terrain on this final day of my third decade in this life. That’s a gift enough in its own right.

An Unavoidable Pile Of Breadcrumbs

The universe is so vast that it’s incredible that anything connects – let alone if multiple things connect. But they do. These connections are breadcrumbs; coincidences that capture our attention and set us on a path – consciously or subconsciously.

Tacitly, we’re drawn to it – this ethereal concept – and in some cases it gives us purpose. It’s a series of events that determine how relationships are made and how wars are won.

It’s fate.

“The concept of coincidences was created for the subconscious to buy enough time to understand the concept of fate.”

But don’t get hung up on it – fate isn’t as dire as we’ve been led to believe.

Where coincidences can easily be passed off as chance, fate digs in a little deeper and has the power to move us. It’s an unavoidable pile of breadcrumbs that need to be dealt with to get by.

But, fate is what you make it. It doesn’t need to be all-encompassing; it all depends on how you feed it and digest it – how far you let it get inside your head and take over your day to day.

Don’t look at fate as an absolute, but as an opportunity.

If it makes you feel better, you can call it kismet…

Save Some Light For Me | 3.28.21

In my dreams
I visit familiar houses
just to hear familiar voices.

I see things like
rocks and trees
taking over dining rooms
with too many doorways…

And small scale
technical TV’s
with lizards living
behind their screens.

I talk to people
sitting inside walls
Knitting.
We talk about
baseball games
they watched on
those reptile TV’s.

People without faces
that would have
familiar faces.
If they had faces.

Their eyes out of focus.

And voices I’m drawn to
so I follow and talk to..
But I can never keep up with.

Voices I make plans with.
Because blurry eyes never lie…

When I want to leave
they won’t let me.

Door knobs I can’t grab.
Doors that move on their own.
Windows that lead to windows.

Whispers I can’t ignore.
Whispers I won’t ignore..
Whispers I should ignore.

The only way out is to wake up.
A real life concept in the shadowlands..

And when I wake up
I spend an hour sorting out
what was real and what was an
Illusion.

Minding My P’s & Q’s

For Penny & Quinn

You’re growing up in a world that’s just starting to understand the importance of equality; but that doesn’t mean that there won’t be a man out there who tries to establish dominance over you.

It’s an antiquated dichotomy that seemed appealing in old movies, but never in real life. Submission isn’t living, it’s surviving.

You will never have to survive.
You will only thrive.

But it won’t be without a couple of bumps and bruises.. Which is why I will teach you how to rise above – either with your words or your actions.

Which is why I’ve surrounded you with strong women – as there’s certain things that need to come from them that will have a greater impact than if they came from me.

I’m not the kind of father who will threaten your boyfriend.
I’ll just always be ready if you need me.

I’m not the kind of father who cares if you have a girlfriend.
Because that’s your choice.
In fact, I think I would prefer it. Haha.

I’m also not the kind of person who will pressure you to be someone or something you’re not. This is your life, and right now I am your guide. It’s my job to foster a warm and beneficial environment for you – but not to dictate who you are.

You don’t want to dance with a purpose?
Cool. Dance for fun!

I was raised by your grandmother, and for that I have a very unique view of the world which conflicts with my size and my loud and outlandish personality; but that’s a different story.

She raised me to accept everyone and everything – but she never made a big deal out of it – because when you make big deals out of tacit things, then they aren’t so tacit anymore; they become more austere and lose the innocence and openness that you should approach them with.

Anyway…

Regarding whoever you fall in love with, if you plan on falling in love with someone:

  1. Should open doors for you.
  2. Should ask you how your day was.
  3. Should always offer you the fluffier pillow.
  4. Should always stand up when you walk in the room.
  5. Should feel comfortable crying in front of you.

Your mom and I didn’t make it, and I am sorry for that, but even now – in the weird and wild places we find ourselves in together – I respect her. She’s your mom and we loved one another enough to bring you both into this world.

I did those five things for her for fifteen years.
I still open doors for her and stand up when she walks into a room..

We will always be behind you to support you. We may get mad at you – but we’ll never let anyone put you down. And even in our anger, we will support you. It’s critical that you know that – as I think some people think they’re all alone sometimes; and none of us really are – ever.

That said, when you need to – lean babies, lean – we’re both strong people and it’s our job to take on your worries and sorrow – from now until the end of time. That said, it’s also our job to make sure your shoulders are strong enough to take on the weight of the world.

6. You can always end an argument with a hug.
7. Be prepared to be disarmed by a hug.
8. Never go to bed angry.

That last one – #8 – is from your grandfather, my dad. He was an asshole. He thought money was the solution for everything. He loved me and your uncles and aunt – but he didn’t respect us. Your mom never met him – because he was the type of man I never want you to meet. He thought he was better than everyone, and he died alone.

We can talk about him when you’re older, if you want – but you have Goomie, and he’s the best grandfather you could ask for. He was the best “dad” I could have asked for.

9. Never think you’re better than anyone. We’re all in this together.
10. Never let anyone think they’re better than you. Roar when you need to road.

Anyway…

I love being your dad. It’s my everything – and everyone knows that. I’m not perfect, and I am learning with you – but while I’m still alive and kicking, I will do everything I can to prepare you for the world – on my own or with a little help from our friends.

Fact is, I am a better father to you than I would have been if I was still married to your mom. It’s a weird thing to say and it can be taken a lot of ways – but just know that I have to focus on you. I don’t have someone else to take the reins. I love it. It’s the best feeling in the world.

All in all, ladies – we are in this together and you’re more than welcome to get down to brass tacks with me and get my head straight – help me figure out the things that you need me to figure out.

All I ask from you is that you keep an open mind.
Because you’re going to need it.

… And that’s not a bad thing.

You have my sword in war until you’re ready to wield it.

Love,
Dad

Thanks, Doc…

Somewhere in 2001, I became an unofficial line coach for “The Vagina Monologues”.

I can’t tell you if I was asked to take on the role as a challenge or as a building block to an unavoidable friendship, but I knew I had to accept it, and take it seriously – because it meant something to the person who asked me.

So I did it. I helped “The Doc” rehearse her lines for her part, every Thursday night – and sometimes on the weekends in a living room we shared with the man we loved.

Today, she sent me a scan of that original script, warts and all, and it cast a million ships of memories through my mind – of a very different time in the world; socially, personally, etc.

And a very different version of me.

The Doc was, and still is, my best friend’s – best friend. And, she’s one of my best friends as well. In fact, it would be better to just consider her my sister at this point.

A wonderful woman who was raised by a wonderful woman to be a strong lead in everything she does, some might simply call her a feminist, which she proudly is. But she’s so much bigger than a singular label and a devout educator at the core.

Even at twenty-one, and drunk, she was laser-focused on Women’s Rights and Equality. We talked about it all the time. We disagreed about it all the time. I was brimming with testosterone and I couldn’t be refined, until someone decided they would take on that fight.

Which, 20 years later, she’s been an integral part of doing.

And no, it’s not that I had an issue with Women’s Rights or Equality or any of that stuff – it’s that I had a problem with her taking up my time with my best friend. But that’s what happens when love walks in. Twenty-on-year-old me didn’t think that way.

Imagine how I felt when she moved in?!?!

We would argue, then we would be drinking buddies. We would argue, then we wouldn’t talk for a week, while sharing a bathroom in a condo. We would argue over the last egg in the fridge.

We. Would. Argue.

But we would figure it out and get those lines practiced like clockwork – every week.

All in the middle of it was our best friend – so we knew we had to eventually draw a line – but we didn’t really do it for him; we did it for one another – because, and don’t tell 21 year old, or even 31 year old her or me this – we really did and do care about one another. We have just been pushing each other in the right direction the whole time, aggressively.

We were destined to be friends – because, ultimately, we wanted to be.
Claws and all…

Anyway.

The Doc – I keep calling her that because she devoted half her life to earn that title – and I would spend hours in the bar at the Nathan Hale Inn on Thursday nights. Drinking expensive wine and bourbon – practicing those lines..

Openly talking, explicitly, about the explicits..

Looking back, it all seems so surreal – but half of my college loans were left on that bar top – so I know it all went down the way it went down.

And she ended up performing her role – a story about vagina’s, furniture, and an ordinary guy named Bob – as if she wrote it herself. A true extrovert; a true natural.

It’s moments like that – situations like this – that we shaping me. I didn’t know it then, but these out of context situations she got me into were breadcrumbs for my future.

She got me to meet Arun Gandhi, grandson of the Gandhi, while my face and knuckles were all busted up. Being embraced by a man of peace, as a man of petty war is still WOW. I cried then. I am crying now.

She got me to march in a pride parade when society was still openly using slurs as the punchline to jokes. A straight man in an openly-gay land in a time where those two things did not coexist.

I honestly don’t even know if she was at either of those events – but I was there because of her influence on me to embrace those things; to see those things – and to understand those things.

2001… 2002… 2005… 2012…

People didn’t understand how NOT OKAY things were out there in the world. These topics were always simmering, but were never the focus. And all the while, she was holding seminars on reality – trying to get people to see the big picture.

Trying to get people to get real.
Trying to get everyone to get everyone.

And her work is working and will continue to work.
Her impact is contagious. Her drive is uncanny.
I stand behind her every stride.

So, Doc, thanks.

Thank you for creating a better environment for anyone that will listen.
Thank you for making my best friend a happy husband and father..
Thank you for showing me a world beyond me.
Thank you for never pulling punches and always being you.

The girls and I love you without end.

Sorry Bob was so fucking boring.

.. And I Will Be Your Rainbow

For Penny

When my daughter was in Kindergarten her mother and I went to our first ever parent teacher conference. Everything was on par – she talks, she colors, she contributes, she’s five.

And then it got weird.

The teacher told us she was very concerned about Penny because she really enjoyed talking about her grandfather – but the stories she told were unbelievable.

The teacher’s concern was abnormally heightened because Penny was so detailed in the tellings of her stories of this raggedy man; and she was able to tell the stories over and over again – at the same level of detail.

The teacher asked us if we had heard any of these stories, and with a grin – I replied “oh, you mean Rainbow?”

That’s where it got weirder.

When Penny was three, she began randomly telling me stories about an adventurous old man – who had a white beard and only one eye. He lost the eye fighting a shark, and later succumbed to his wounds – and now talked to her – exclusively – through some portal in the afterlife.

As the stories grew, she told me he was her grandfather. And because of the depth of the stories – the detail, and the incredible minutiae – I was all in; I wanted to know more and more – but I needed to figure out what we were dealing with:

  1. Was this a little girl communicating with dead people?
    -or-
  2. Was it her amazing imagination and she was just sharing her excitement?

So..

I showed her pictures of her mom’s grandfather. Nope.
I showed her pictures of my father, who had died before she was born. Nope.
I even showed her pictures of my Uncle, who she knew, but had recently passed on to the afterlife.

Also nope.
But she insisted that she was still talking to this person.

Time marches on: It wasn’t until we were all out to breakfast one Sunday when Penny announced to us that I, was in fact, Rainbow – but from another dimension.

Actually, she didn’t know the word “dimension” then, so she said “not from here”.

Either way, here I was her dad and there I was her one-eyed grandfather, with a white beard and matching ponytail, who died fighting the shark who took his eye. But not at the same time that he was fighting the shark. No. They fought a lot. Until one day, Rainbow killed the shark. Then, according to Penny, he got a little older, and then he died.

She thinks it had something to do with the missing eye and salt water. Totally the shark’s fault. Had to be. Because it’s that bond that brought them both back. See, the shark ended up turning into a mermaid, and Rainbow married that mermaid – but only after they both came back from the dead.

Oddly, Rainbow still only had one eye, but – you know what? This isn’t my story, so I’m not going to correct her.

Anyway.

I’m telling you all of this because today, on the way home from school, Penny asked me if I had heard from Rainbow recently.

This has always been her story.

She’s never asked for my contribution.
So, of course I had seen him, sort of.
I really had only heard about where he was from some people in town.

Naturally…

“Truth is” I told her “before winter, Rainbow was living in a treehouse in the the woods, selling mosquitoes and moths to a tribe of people that lived in those woods. But he moved on when the cold of winter forced him into the mountains.

“We’ll have to see what happens when all the snow falls and he can ride the river back down”. I concluded.

I figured that bit of on-the-spot story building would satiate her seven-year-old mind, but if anything – it just opened a door.

I looked in the rear view and her mind was on fire; eyes wide.

She went on to tell me – shaking her head back and forth and smiling – “of course he went up into the mountains! That’s where his wife lives, in their cabin. But only in the winter, because she has to go back to the ocean when it’s warm out. She’s a mermaid, remember?”

(Of course I remember! Who forgets a mermaid?)

Penny kind of faded into a daydream after that. Probably drumming up more adventures for the old man. Smiling the whole while. Kiddingly scoffing at me about the whole thing as she faded.

In fact, she hasn’t said much since then

She’s upstairs with Quinn, building Mega Bloks castles in their loft – mind still spinning with stories of this dimension-traveling old man who I guess I may or may not, someday be.

Before we left the conference that night, the teacher, who was still rattled and baffled that we knew about this whole thing and had ZERO issue with it, asked me if I thought Penny needed to talk to anyone about this. As “it wasn’t normal for a five year old girl to think so expansively and overtly”.

My response was simple…

“I hope she talks to everyone about it.”

That’s the last time I talked to that teacher. She was a fine woman – good with kids and all – gave me no cause for alarm. She just sort of distanced herself from me from that point on.

Epilogue:

I’ll always love you, Penny.

Love,
… Well, you tell me.

P.S. I don’t know Robert Plant and I post this with full knowledge that I don’t have any right to any of the amazing work he does. However, given the context, I hope we’re cool.