I returned to Hoots earlier this week and basically fell asleep for about two days. I had planned a self-induced coma for Monday but life sort of got in the way, so I just had to go with the flow.
I finally ended up at a juke joint I hadn’t been in for awhile and saw the very famous Dirk Diggler, who was looking chipper, who tried to be just another person on the list that tried to explain NASCAR to me. This list of fine, concerned folks have tried to explain this soap opera of wheels and gears to me before and I appreciated him trying to teach me, especially about some bad, intentional wreck last week but I still don’t get the allure of NASCAR, but I do enjoy people trying to educate me about it. I think that I like that best. I also don’t understand neurosurgery either, so there is that.
He had seen a statue of a monkey holding a baby monkey near a dumpster. He had deemed it close enough to be Bigfoot and decided he was going to get it for me as a gift. When he returned to pick it up, it was sadly gone. The fact that someone was willing to dumpster dive for me to get a statue of “Bigfoot” tickled me to no end. As I haven’t been in Hoots very much recently, it was also good to see Mr. Jimmy. He didn’t look like he felt very good so I didn’t get to hear him cuss. I was admittedly somewhat disappointed because I usually learn new curse words that I try to incorporate into everyday life from him.
I heard talk of newspapers, which honestly this time, I recused myself mentally from because I don’t work for one anymore and it was of the one I used to be at. I have found that listening is better than participation because I don’t need to throw gasoline on a fire. I was too close to the situation so it’s hard for me to be unbiased. It’s taken me eight months to learn that lesson because these are my friends from there.
They are still living it. I am not.
I’ve been on the road so my time is not my own right now. I love being busy. I love meeting new people, so life is good. As I keep telling myself that it’s become a reality. I’m pleased to know that sometimes when you do indeed talk the talk, walking the walk becomes much easier.
And to all the bloggers I’ve met in the past few weeks, ones that I have known before and new ones I’ve met, thanks for keeping me sane and keeping me company.
That’s what makes this little place on the web quite wonderful. It gave me all of you.
Now, with that said because I’m going to do some self-promotion here, put Speak to Power in your RSS feeds if you are so inclined, join us on Facebook or on Twitter.
Vibinc kept the fires going over at Speak to Power and Squirrel Queen was patient because last week, and for three days this week, I didn’t even have time to think. That could be good or it could be bad, one never knows until they get the hindsight glasses on.
I find myself talking about politics a great deal, as that’s what I sorta do now, but I am having to physically and verbally set some boundaries about it because my brain gets a bit overfull.
So last night, I drowned myself in bad television, ate a bowl of tomato soup which is my comfort food and tried to heal a sore throat.
Tis my own fault as I sometimes forget to wear a jacket.
Cheetos Gazing
I’m feeling a bit disconnected with Hoots right now for the mere fact that I’m not here. When I’m here, it is usually doing some recovery time from driving, neuron malfunctions and spending time with my family. The time spent unemployed did have a positive impact where friendships were nurtured because I had the time to spend with friends without having to be confined to a schedule. Now my time is more limited and I’m having to get back in a routine of organization and structure, which isn’t always easy when you are living out of a suitcase. I have it easier that most and I don’t know how the bossman does it, but he does. Don’t get me wrong, I love traveling but there are times that I just need to take out my brain, put it in the refrigerator and take a cranium break. I plan on doing that on Monday. Yes, campers, I plan for my mental health breaks these days. I know, fascinating.
Today, I head back to Memphis for the evening as I’m going to a wedding shower and SQ has a tournament game she has to attend for work. Yeppers, it’s high school tournament time again which means the Squirrel Goddess doesn’t know where she’s going to be from one game to the next. As I have barely seen her since the beginning of the year, I’m going to travel with her a bit in the next week. Work is work, but you have to concentrate on your relationships too. It’s important.
And, as I’m having to schedule myself (I am as unorganized as a squirrel who’s licked the bottom of an abandoned cooler of anhydrous for meth making) I’m having to learn to be more assertive about time, which you kinda lose when you aren’t working. I have learned that I have had to regain that ability to say Yes, No and Argh.
Anyway, it’s not too bad really because I like being busy and useful.
One good thing about Hoots is that when I returned late Thursday, I got to hear ghost stories, as you know that I love, about a local bar and grill.
There aren’t complaints here in the least, just learning new things about myself, meeting fabulous new people and trying to get through the transition that is life. Speaking of meeting amazing new people, Rep. Jeanne Richardson has given me a new addiction, which is Memphis-styled collard greens.
I could eat them everyday. Thanks Jeanne!
I think I need collard greens rehab because they are incredible.
We live in a frantic time.
There is so much information available that it’s hard to find one small rein on the horse to hang on to. We text, we email, we Facebook and we twitter. Websites, blogs and forums have about three seconds to grab a reader’s attention. Once that three seconds is over, poof! It’s gone.
It’s more than that however.
Are we really listening and retaining what is going on around us? Are we really paying attention to our friends, our associates and our families and what they are really saying? Are they listening to us?
When you think about it, it can be a lonely place because, despite what folks may say, it’s an angry, confused world out there right now. That’s not always the case, but it’s also a reality. I’m not saying we don’t have genuine love or appreciation or respect. But in my online persona, I sure don’t want to have to fight for it either. It should be organic. I am also pleased that I’m seeing new faces on the scene, less tired than I feel today and who have a spark of energy that is invigorating to watch and, yes, feel.
But today I’m talking about real communication and our ability to listen even if we don’t like or agree with the message.
Even face-to-face, it’s hard to focus on anything but real life issues all of us are going through. There are many of us who are so deep into our own stuff. Financial obligations and challenges, relationship issues, re-identifying losses and gains that were unexpected, trying to remain positive and a gamut of things that are not only emotional and run deep, but things that gives us a feeling that we are drowning.
I read blogs, I talk to folks in different situations and it appears to me I’m not the only one who feels that way. It seems that our politics and our news are more about the grabbing the reader instead of dealing with the facts, and also importantly, the conversation and perceptions on people’s minds. We don’t always cultivate the ideas of others, not do we feel our ideas our being nurtured either because I think we all forget that relationships, albeit online or off, is a give or take. To be heard, you have to listen. This is a privilege that goes both ways.
There really are no answers here, it’s just an observation and this has been brewing in my brain for about a week. I realized while combing through blogs for Speak to Power, that a lot of bloggers have gone quiet.
Of course, this is my opinion. My mother died 12-years-ago today, I’m going through transitions that are very real to me and my family and I basically feel that I’m starting over, a feeling that has gone on since last year since I was downsized. I never thought I’d have to do that in my mid-40s. It’s hard and wasn’t on the plan. It has not been easy. I have experienced highs and lows, some that had to do with my very own identity.
I’m not the only one.
My hope is that I can continue to see the story within the story. I will work on trying to hone my listening skills. I have always tried to see both sides to an issue and not react emotionally even when I was chomping at the bit. When I find that others refuse to do that, my eyes and ears will eventually have to go elsewhere.
In this age of communication, I believe it is a mission to communicate and that starts with listening instead of marginalizing people that might not agree but we have to remember we are all of value.
Life is too short for anything less.
Howdy.
I know I haven’t been blogging much here. It feels like I’ve been writing everywhere but here but that is groovy, I guess.
This is that time of year I usually take a break, mentally at least. Tomorrow is the anniversary of my mom’s death. As I do every year, I’m processing it, processing my life since she left us and wondering about things like I always do.
As I’m in a bit of a writer’s block, I will tell you to go here and read what I said last year about her. I know that’s blog cheating but I just can’t bear to rip it open right now again.
So have a good weekend. Tell someone that you love how you feel out loud and be kind to one another.
With the recent suicide of Andrew Koenig dominating the news, seeing the impact of how his depression and death has impacted his parents is devastating. Raincoaster reports on it. Depression is a wicked and dangerous beast, there is no doubt.
A small kid stood in front of me at a convenience store today as I was trying to pay for gas as I was headed out of Memphis back to Hoots Commons.
He was tow-headed and about six-years-old.
“Today was say something nice about someone day at school, Mama,” he lisped.
“Did you say something nice.”
“I did. I said that I liked Amy’s laugh.”
“Well, that’s nice.” his mother said, laying a $10 on the counter.
“I also said we should always be nice,” he grinned. “We had cookies too. It was a pretty good day.”
I don’t know why, but that stuck with me today after I saw her get her change and lean down to give him a hug.
I think I sort of fell in love with both of them.
I am 44-years-old.
I have some amazing good times and then sometimes dark things happen that we all go through. I have been blessed this week with good fortune. On the other hand, I am still reeling from events that I’m still recovering from. Occasionally I find my voice, other times I realize the battle is not one I want to take.
I am sitting in Memphis tonight, alone without a television,, which may be the smartest thing ever. This week I haven’t seen Lost, I have had to go searching for what interests me. I found, as you know if you read this blog, is Craig Ferguson.
Last night, sans audience, he did a Tom Snyder sort of interview with Stephen Fry. It was an interview for grown-ups which is basically a state of mind, it’s not an age thing or maybe I am trying to convince myself of this. I don’t know. As an older woman, I realized occasionally I need to hear people talking about real things. About getting older, about learning new things and about being honest.
I was a kid when Tom Snyder was on the air. He smoked, he would pump his hands up and down and his tie was always askew. But he taught me a lot about pop culture. As I got older, I realized that it was Snyder (I was an nightowl as a child) that taught me not only pop culture but politics and modern society.
Ferguson is smart. He constantly talks about being middle-aged and being lucky after experiencing hard times of self-indulgence. I get that. Good Lord, I do. My age range is not of Baby Boomers or Generation X. We are in the middle. In some ways, we Inbetweeners. We never got a groovy name, dagnabbit.
I have to say, I like being talked to. Not being told what I should believe or should think. There are some smart cookies out there. Fry and Ferguson gave us that last night. Older people having conversations that delighted me.
Let me say, Stephen Fry quoted Wordsworth. They talked technology Ferguson,30 minutes, by himself most nights can be a maniac, was the subdued one and let Fry shine. He is a smart guy. He knew that Fry was chatty, smart and clever. He picked the right guest. That, my friends, is being innovative but also practicing smart business.
It’s also amusing to me that a Scotsman and an Englishman summed up the beauty of America and being an American. I kind of needed that.
I do say this which I referred to before. They talked about being older as Ferguson always does in a comic way. He didn’t have to say that last night, he showed that there was value. He showed, regardless of if it is puppets, interviewing Desmond Tutu or any night where he riffs on the days events that is one of the smartest men in television. John Carney has posted about this today as well. Ferguson won’t do this daily and I agree with John but he’s not going to do puppets daily either. He’s mixing it up. That’s why fans watch.
Maybe what he’s doing will save my generation. Let us hope because last night proved, once again, the man is pretty fantastic on a lot of levels.
The term of “if it bleeds it leads” has been on my radar since I started working in news, which initially was in radio broadcasting. People are voyeuristic by nature when it comes to devastating news. It’s been that way historically. An example would be that when we see a wreck on the interstate, cars will slow down to a crawl to see the accident. Was anyone killed? Was someone hurt?
You know where I’m going here.
News rooms in print and broadcasting has been cut so severely in recent years that beat reporting is all but gone. Yes, you still have political beat writers from all over the state at the legislature, you have business editors, because business stories can bring revenue into the industry and sports, because sports sells. Those beat reporters though of earlier days are basically nonexistent. Reporters and other newspaper personnel are handling blogs, which have created a new beat for lack of a better word, in their spare time. Smaller papers have had reporters writing about business one day, a county commission meeting the next, covering fires and local crime stories the rest of the time and then still build the paper. Believe me, I did this for years.
If we want positive news, news organizations are going to have to make a commitment to it and you will find that, in the online world at least, that people go searching for the “sexy” stories. By that I mean the ones that have a tabloid quality to it many times. I saw on Twitter on Tuesday that Austin’s newspaper website had a hell of a time handling the traffic after Joseph Stack committed what has been termed taxicide
. There is also a depression of sorts happening in this country more than just the obvious financial aspect of what is happening. It’s “easier” to look at the negative. When MSM looks at Tiger Woods as a moral barometer for a nation, it’s strange. He’s a golfer who screwed up. He didn’t apologize to the nation on Friday. He apologized to his sponsors.
In this same vein, let’s look at niche publications and websites that we find now. From parenting and society to real estate/community magazines, it’s common place to see these publications at the front of restaurants, convenience stores and the list goes on. Small audiences most likely but they are still alive and kicking and folks pick them up to read when they are having their breakfast. Print is expensive though and it will be interesting to see what happens in the next five years with them.
On a positive note though, this is a time of reinvention. SCM asks a good question that do we want more positive news? I think yes. Although the word hyperlocal is a bit too broad at times, I think you will find established news organizations taking to the blogosphere to get more news out more quickly in a local, specific environment. I believe you will find nontraditional alliances in the future between entities that you might never have thought about, working on community efforts because everything is local when it is said and done.
Yes, if it bleeds it leads, but the market is glutted right now with bad news. There are opportunities here right now, but it’s just going to take some smart folks who are willing to take a chance to find the balance between blood and victory.
I’ve been in Hoots for a few days but I’m heading back to Memphis. Big doings down there and to be honest, it’s kind of weird having one foot in Hoots and one foot there. I’m adjusting to it but it’s kind of weird.
The S.A.D has kind of broken with actual blue skies breaking through the gray we’ve all been seeing recently. Am I sick of snow? Yes I am. It’s rather sad that I’ve become my grandfather and I’m talking about the weather here on Newscoma.
Thursday was Arthur Guinness’ first birthday so if you have one of the puppies, it was a year ago that day. Buy your puppy a milk bone.
As you know, I’ve been doing a bit of writing over at Speak To Power. Spoke about the Western Division here in the state yesterday if you are so inclined.
Back to Memphis, I’m going to be there Monday through Wednesday. Tell me what I need to go do while I’m there because, as you know, sharing is caring.
