Rothacker Reviews

Debbie Call: Blogging Anxiety

To move forward we must loosen our collar and let our voice be free.

From Debbie Call's Spirit in Gear:

"Letting our unique voice speak through.  Yeah, yeah, content is king up to a point.  But when I read another blog, I'm looking for that person's voice to add the meaning to the information presented.

The majority of my blogging performance anxiety centers around my openness, or lack thereof, to letting my voice speak through my posts. How honest, transparent, strong, soft, funny, or sad do I allow my voice to be?"

Haven't we all been here?  For me it's the evil little critic perched upon my shoulder:

"Don't write that David.  You might as well go to school wearing nothing but your underwear."

"Now David, you know no one will respond to that post."

"David, you're blubbering all over yourself.  Can't you write with more clarity son?"

The evil little critic has swept many a paragraph into the dustpan.  Sure we want to be interesting, to have lots of people read our stuff.  I think however, it's like mining for gold.  We have to sift through a lot of rocks and pebbles to find the gold.  For me, I have to write rocks and pebbles.  But the more I sift, the better chances I have of unearthing a little golden nugget.

Debbie asks:  "Does anyone else out there struggle with this ego-induced inhibition? I'd love to know how you work through it, or better yet, how you circumvent it altogether."

How about it folks? 

 Author who addresses true voice and spirit:  Brenda Ueland in If You Want To Write .

Shared Paths

To move forward, we must share our pathways with others.

By way of Starbucker and Ramblings From a Glass Half Full and Rosemary Honn's Daily PlanIt, I discovered Joy Koenig's Shared Paths.  Joy's byline, Guiding You Along The Road Less Traveled, caught my eye and created an urge for further exploration.

To fully appreciate Joy's site, one must block out some time, sit down with a hot cup of green tea and slowly meander about.  The page I first land on is Change Tools.  With Seth Godin's commentary on change fresh on my mind, I find the material that Joy provides here Thanksgiving dinner spread.

As the aroma of the baking turkey wafts throughout the house, hop up on this chair for a better view of Joy's site.  I like the amount of resource that Joy provides on the Myers Briggs Personality Type.  Because people frequently list personality types, it's nice to have a handy reference.

Pour yourself another cup of that green tea, slice a piece of that pumpkin pie and enjoy!

Change: Where Will It Occur?

To move forward start from the outside.

Inspiration today comes from Seth Godin.  It is imperative that you understand my state of mind here - somewhat ok, teetering on stable.  The subject of change as Seth relates, is too hard for me to resist, so I must take back the statement that I wrote last August.

Anyone who has worked for a large company and has attempted to change process, products, etc., can immediately connect with Seth.  The inertia behind the establishment, the company, is jetliner and the change agent is ant.

Where Culture Gets Stuck

I once had a boss declare:  "I hate change!"  Our company was stuck, mired in the mud of status-quo and I was mired in the mud of "well Dave, you make an ok dollar."    Egads!  Someone might have well as opened up my skull and let my pea brain spill out on the wave of spirit bashing.  Seth says to leave a place like this.  I say jetting away on the Concord wouldn't be fast enough.

Change, as what needs to happen to move the world forward, needs to begin on our own battlefield of choice.  Seth Godin's essay begs for reflection.  Think about your own circumstance.  Move outside if necessary and make it happen.

Business Training and Development

In order to move forward we must mark our trail with bread crumbs.

Staying organized is a never ending challenge.  One nice feature of blogs is the ability to organize information.  Lisa Haneberg, author of Management Craft, breaks down a list of business Web sites by categories, providing a very tidy means of organization. 

Lisa, representing leadership and management, along with the following folks:

Curt Rosengren - The Occupational Adventure (career development)
Lori Richardson - Sales Coach  and Score More Sales (sales/revenue generation)
Lynn Gaertner-Johnston - Business Writing (writing and communication)
Fran Fisher - Powerful Conversations (coaching)

...held a panel discussion on using blogs to enhance training and development.  The sites shown here are those thought (collectively) to be the most useful.

Gmail: An Idea For The Star

If you want to move forward you must be mindful of the good stuff that happens to you along the way.

By way of Dwayne Melancon's Genuine Curiousity, Matthew Cornell's Matt's Idea Blog.  Matt's post Use Gmail's "star" to highlight your good news, tells us how to track good news e-mail.  Matt also speaks of tracking the wonderful things that happen to you in a personal journal.  Check it out.

Thanks Matt!

The How To Manual

It takes a collective effort to move forward.

Did you ever try and but a brand new bike together?  How about a barbecue grill?  A piece of furniture?  I used to think the reason I lost hair had to do with blow drying it everyday from the time I was fifteen until I was forty.  But I am relatively sure some hair loss can be traced back to inaccurate directions and missing parts from the "easy assembly, no tools required," products that flood the market.  I always found it interesting that the pile of hair on the floor was considerably smaller however, when I had help translating directions and putting stuff together.


wikiHow is a collaborative writing project to build the world's largest how-to manual.  Projects like this give people a stage where they can create and refine content together.  It is the Gemini 7 of our future.

A Fork in the Road

To move forward we must be mindful of the past.

I read Starbucker's Back to the Fork in the Road this morning and it paused and caused me to think of my journey this month at Rothacker Reviews.  I began the month here .  And as you can see, by the magic of editing I was able to inject an update. 

Since 2002, my onboard guiding light has been The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost:

            Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
            And sorry I could not travel both
            And be one traveler, long I stood
            And looked down one as far as I could
            To where it bent in the undergrowth;
            
            Then took the other, as just as fair,
            And having perhaps the better claim,
            Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
            Though as for that, the passing there
            Had worn them really about the same,
            
            And both that morning equally lay
            In leaves no step had trodden black.
            Oh, I kept the first for another day!
            Yet knowing how way leads to way,
            I doubted if I should ever come back.
            
            I shall be telling this with a sigh
            Somewhere ages and ages hence:
            Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
            I took the one less traveled by,
            And that has made all the difference.

"Because it was grassy and wanted wear,"  Doesn't the universe just shout out to one here:  "Do what's in your heart.  Do not follow the herd over the cliff's edge." 

Many thanks to Starbucker for a very meaningful and introspective-causing essay!  Yes, life is a funny thing!

Not Perfect? Not Problem

"Everybody is Talented, Original and Has Something Important to Say."...from Brenda Ueland's If You Want To Write . 

Brenda was born in 1891, and published this book in 1938.  Brenda takes aim on those who criticize grammar and the technical aspects that they find in the writings of others.  She also believes that criticism like this thwarts the natural creativity that comes from the factory when we are born.    I agree.  But I also respect and admire the reverence writers like Amy Grahran , Verna Wilder  and Elaine Liner  have for the technicality and structure of the written word.

In my never ending quest to reach the right side of my brain, I think some things that I've written that could be construed as unconventional, have actually helped to drive a wedge into the chasm of my normalcy and have allowed a little creativity to leak out.  Instead of wielding the cold, sharp steel of the delete button, I think we should let these thoughts simmer like good marinara sauce.  We know we're are getting close when the condensate begins to drip from the kitchen window of our minds.

"Your point Dave?"

Make a splice in the conduit that runs from your brain to your pen.  Splice into the part that comes from your gut; your soul.  Open that artery and free its volume.  Write what spills out.  Do not worry if your writing isn't perfect.  Not problem.

Lets Talk...Woman to Woman

You know that advice that I just gave in the last post?  Don't wait for perfection, just do it.  Think I'll listen to myself...

She had felt way too much pain and agony.  A young woman with serious marital problems stops in to withdraw money from her savings account.  Her husband had closed the account.  A recently widowed older woman stops in to see what bank accounts she had.  Her husband had done all of the banking.  A young female college graduate stopped in to open her first checking account.  "How do I balance this checkbook?"

She had felt way too much pain and agony.  For over twenty years he would listen to the day's stories.  Often times they were accompanied by tears.  Mrs. Jones had lost her husband.  She had no clue about their banking.  Mrs Smith's adult children were fighting over her bank accounts.  She didn't know what to do.  Ms. Carter had gotten into credit card debt in college.  She couldn't qualify for a home loan.

She had felt way too much pain and agony.  She was fed up.  She wasn't going to take it anymore.  It was time to do something about it:  Lets Talk...Woman to Woman . 

Words cannot express how proud that I am of Rosemary .  Rosemary is driven to help women achieve financial independence.  She has been tinkering with her Web site trying to get it just right.  Wrong.  And I know better.  So I am shouting out a heads up to what she is doing.  She has got two things going on. 

Day Job.   Rosemary is an expert residential senior loan officer.  She is not a salesperson.  She combines awesome product knowledge along with heart and soul.  I have seen her steer customers away from loans that would have given her a higher commission towards what was better for them.  By the way, she is able to conduct business electronically.  Translation: Contact her for help or advice.

Passion .  Not that the girl doesn't bring passion to the day job.  You've only to talk to her for one minute to establish that fact.  Rosemary is hell-bent on providing a safe sanctuary for women to come for honest advice.  She had been to The Women's Life Expo yesterday with a couple of friends.  The passion that coursed through her body last night as she was telling me about possibilities for her group brought me goose bumps and had me high-fiving her.  Whew!

Group?  Yes, Rosemary is forming a group of like-minded women all hell-bent on helping other women.  Lets Talk...Woman to Woman is in its infancy.  Stop by her site from time to time to watch it grow, evolve and blossom. 

Younger Generation: Do We Get Them?

"When he talks my brain screams out this song...

Hello I don't understand you won't you tell me your name
Hello I don't understand you why don't you get in the game"

Dude!  I hope there are not too many other cats like you out there...especially in management positions! 

Daniel Ruth, columnist for The Tampa Tribune, writes an article  about college students and the Facebook  phenomenon.  Judging from Mr. Ruth's picture, his origin can be traced to the Baby Boomer years, just like mine.  Judging from Daniel's discourse, his mind is still there.  I merely state this as an observation, not a slam.  Daniel asks a class of college students that he has been asked to teach:

"Wait a minute here.  Let me see if I have this straight.  You create an online profile of yourself for total strangers to read and then get in touch with you?  And why would anyone do that?"

Now, as a parent of a generation Y'er who has created a My Space account in stealth mode, I can somewhat relate.  But as old foggies who deal with younger folks and might actually remember that Sunday night in February of 1964, we need to understand why the connected generation feels the way they do about Facebook, My Space, other entities; and why they do do the things that they do.

Personally, I love the spirit of generation X & Y!  I love their sense of adventure;  I love their sense of connection;  I love their sense of expression;  I love their unwillingness to robotically do as their told (don't tell my girls this though);    I love their determination to find a better way;  I love their propensity to embrace experience;  And I love their desire to make a difference.

Kind of hard not to notice that I've been talking about the connected generation lately.  I can't help it.  Lisa Johnson made me do it!  I am reading Lisa's book Mind Your X's and Y's and couldn't wait to finish it before talking about it. 

I suspect that Daniel Ruth is more tuned in than what we (I) have deduced from his article.  I also suspect though, that a whole lot of folks born prior to 1964 and have read Daniel's piece are relating to; "why do these young people do what they do?"  And this concerns me.