Ever hear something and it just resonates with you? The way a song sounds? The voice of a loved one? Today in a meeting, a prospect recited a James Michener quote to me. I have never heard it before and to be honest, I haven’t heard of Michener. Well stupid me… the guy was a great American writer. He wrote 40+ books over his career, with his most popular being Tales of the South Pacific, which was later made into a movie. Michener is attributed with many quotes, but the one I love goes like this:
“The master in the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his information and his recreation, his love and his religion. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence at whatever he does, leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing. To him he’s always doing both. ” Do you make a distinction between your work or play? Is your labor your leisure? Is love and your religion synonymous? Lastly, do you leave others to decide whether you are working or playing? As for me, I am doing both.
Not What You Expect…The Dark Truth Behind Words
I typically write a post the day after the big game, where I analyze the commercials that the ad gods deemed worthy to spend millions on. After some thought, I decided it wasn’t worth it. Yes, the biggest day of ad spend in one place, on one network, is not worthy of further review. Why? Because it’s my blog and I said so. Ok, the real reason is I wasn’t happy with the quality of content. I was tired after the first quarter of seeing the blathering commercials, all seeming to be the same… humorless, pandering and meh.
So in place of my post game commercial analysis, I thought it might be interesting to look at something else. I was wandering around the internet, sometimes a dangerous thing, but I ended up on a spam content website that had articles that you click to read, and then take you through a “next” workflow to read the article, all to increase page views on their website, so they can charge more money for advertising. ANYWAY, what caught my eye the most was the words this company used in its headlines. There were hundreds of articles and I started to see a pattern in the usage of words. Why should we care what they write? Well, they write to attract the attention of the people who have the shortest attention spans of all, web users without an agenda. Here are a list of the words that I saw used the most: Shady, Tragic, Strange, The Truth (or The Dark Truth), Nasty, Proof, Hilarious and Untold.
When you are writing, of course, the number one rule is to keep your reader top of mind; what they want to hear, tone, etc. This website is doing that, but it has to grab your attention quickly… hence the word choice in the headlines. Check it out for yourself… I think it is very interesting when you look with a different set of eyes! <Click Here To Be Redirect To The Shady Side Of the Internet, or The Tragic Untold Truth of Internet Journalism >
I Read some good quotes in a local publication and thought I would share them….luck you.
When I was young, I needed help to get over them… I didn’t always want help though.
When I was in high school, I read the novel Dune. After reading it, I wrote down a quote from the book and carried it with me for the next 30+ years. It helps to me remember that I will always have fears and it gives me the strength to face them. The next time you have fear, I hope you can remember this quote, and that it helps.