According to an article in Forbes on authentic marketing, ‘Authentic marketing begins not with tactics or strategy, but with the self. It asks, What do we (as an organization) believe? If ‘success’ is the progressive realization of a worthy ideal, then what ideal or set of ideals do we want to be known for? Other than the commodity that we deliver to our customers, how will we deliver those ideals?’
I think it’s a good time to press pause on everything and go back to the drawing board and re-evaluate the point of… why it’s important to share more with more people about authenticity. And sincerity. And ‘realness.’ Because it’s getting out of hand, really. It’s all over the place just uncomfortable, to me, now. Reading and writing, listening and speaking, you just can’t tell: who is this, really, behind the voice? What if they’re just trying to guess what I might like and show up as that personality? In the end, they will just Goa way beaus it’s not sustainable to pretend that long. So why would I want to embark on this journey of engaging with someone who doesn’t know how to show up honestly, as themselves?
It’s too much. They want me to get into debates about pronouns, but they don’t want to do basic things like return emails. I’m not sure I want to keep these people in my orbit. They tired me, relentlessly, with the suck of attention that I can’t give.
People are pretending. Too much, toooooo often. I see it and I feel it all around me and I’m tired. I guess this is why I’m returning to blogging, in part. I want to write the things that are starting to return, in a way, which includes a breath of fresh air in the form of blogs that talk. Just talk. Directly, without this whole thing that is going on sometimes regarding, ‘Looking good.’ On a few calls this month, I’ve been talking with members my community, S P A C E, about this topic. About how it feels to just really show up as yourself without all the ridiculous primping and priming required to get up and go. Get up and go is a kind of thing, for me, which is how I got up and went three times outside of my arena of comfort, moving outside of my country for two of these times (Ireland, Cambodia) and accidentally getting stuck in a different spot for the pandemic for two years (Vietnam), this last one. Gotta say: you really figure out some stuff when you are outside the box. Way, way outside. You have to deprogram like crazy and when you do, it’s shaking out all the stuff that one could call ‘belief systems’ and having to really look at them, one by one. Like marbles, you see them, you turn them over and over, and you decide right there, on the spot, which ones to let go of. Forever.
Returning to the internet as a result of the pandemic’s making us need to rely more on technology to stay connected with each other has opened a lot of things up, for me, these two years, personally. I have always had a low tolerance for fakes and flakes, but now, it is down to 0%. I’m really not able to give y attention to people who can’t show up for things, or bother, or care, about being enough of a self-respecting person to honor their own commitments to their verbal agreements. Why this is such a problem for me is outside the scope of this blog, and post, butthose homI get along with best get it, that I’m serious wheN I say, ‘See you there.’ And I go. And so do they. It’s nice that way. Time-saving. Reliability is a highly valued trait for me, in clients, and in friends. I mean, friends for life friends, not ‘friends’ like you know, some people label them. Cross my boundaries? We’re not friends. Lost the conversation thread? We’re not friends. Stopped showing up for each other meaningfully? Not friends. Didn’t talk to me at all during my time stranded in Vietnam, mostly alone, most of that time, for not two or four but 20 months? Who are you, again?
Shirts. The shirts are the ones who want you to look at their shirts, and not their eyes. See what I wear. See how I dress.See what I present myself to be. But don’t notice I am lying, to you, and also, to myself. I’d hate for you to read me, that intimately.
They make me so tired.
Ugh, writing about them is making me tired. I’ll have to stop here, for today.
Let me play a song, instead.
Into the distance a ribbon of black
Stretched to the point of no turning back
A flight of fancy on a windswept field
Standing alone my senses reeled
A fatal attraction is holding me fast how
How can I escape this irresistible grasp?
Can’t keep my eyes from the circling skies
Tongue tied and twisted just an earth bound misfit, I
Ice is forming on the tips of my wings
Unheeded warnings I thought I thought of everything
No navigator to find my way home
Unladened, empty and turned to stone
A soul in tension that’s learning to fly
Condition grounded but determined to try
Can’t keep my eyes from the circling skies
Tongue-tied and twisted just an earth-bound misfit, I
Friction lock, set
Mixtures, rich
Propellers, fully forward
Flaps, set, ten degrees
Engine gauges and suction, check
Mixture set to maximum percent, recheck
Flight instruments
Altimeters, check both
(Garbled word) – on
Navigation lights, on
Strobes, on
Confirm three-eight-echo ready for departure
Hello again, this is now 129.4
129.4, it’s to go
You may commence your takeoff, winds over ten knots
Three-ieght-echo
Easy on the brakes, take it easy, its gonna roll this time
Just hand the power gradually, and it
Above the planet on a wing and a prayer,
My grubby halo, a vapor trail in the empty air,
Across the clouds I see my shadow fly
Out of the corner of my watering eye
A dream unthreatened by the morning light
Could blow this soul right through the roof of the night
There’s no sensation to compare with this
Suspended animation, a state of bliss
Can’t keep my mind from the circling skies
Tongue-tied and twisted just an earth-bound misfit, I