I have been disappointed recently and it’s an odd feeling, not one I am all that familiar with. But it is here and I am evaluating it even as I feel it.
What causes you to be disappointed? Does it happen often? Where does the disappointment go? What do you do with it?
Drawing and questions by Marty Coleman of The Napkin Dad Daily
Quote by Martin Luther King, Jr.
A girl named Jennifer, jealous,
A woman named Demi, distraught.
A man named Mel, hellish,
A woman named Carly, caught.
What did you learn from hearing those things? Did you grow, learn, progress, become kinder, smarter, healthier, more loving, stronger, wiser, happier, more compassionate?
I didn’t think so.
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Drawing by Marty Coleman, who wonders what people say about him.
Quote by Anonymous
What word or words do you think can and should be used to describe people physically?
For a while now it’s been bugging me to hear when someone says ‘She’s fat.’ or ‘Wow, that guy is really fat.’ It’s been bugging me because, even though it’s common usage to say it, fat is actually a substance, not a person. I understand that when someone says that they aren’t really saying the whole person is made up of the substance called fat. They are saying the person has a lot of fat on him or her. They are saying the person is overweight. But my issue comes from how that verbalization leads to a one dimensional judgment of the person. If you say ‘that person is overweight’ then yes, by inference you are saying they have extra fat on them. But you are not saying they ARE fat.
Using that definition has long been in the mainstream, so much so that an overweight person will very likely call themselves fat. They know they aren’t all fat, but they still say it. And what does that mindset do? It focuses and defines the person as being one thing, and a thing is supposedly not good.
But the truth is fat is good. We can’t live without it. We need to eat it, it protects us, nourishes us, gives us many essential elements to our survival. What is at issue is a body out of balance, with too much fat and not enough of other substances, like muscle, bone, blood, etc. It needs to be in some balance so the person, who is a combination of all of those substances, can be healthy and productive in life. A person with too much fat on them is in danger of being out of balance. Then again so is a person with not enough fat on them.
So for me, I continue to make an effort to not use that word when describing someone. Overweight, fine. heavy, fine. But Fat? Fat is a substance, not a person.
What do you think?
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Drawing and quote by Marty Coleman
Yesterday it was about men, today – women. It’s Independence Week at the NDD.
This could be about men, it’s true. Many men don’t ever hear that voice inside themselves. But it does seem, at least in my American experience, to be especially true of women. But I would like to hear from my female friends, is this true for you? Have you heard that voice? Are you hoping to? How did you know it was from within and not just another voice from without? What did you do about it?
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Drawing by Marty Coleman, who hasn’t read the book, but did see the movie.
Quote by Betty Friedan, American author & feminist
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Thank God I made it to day #3 of Competition Week at the NDD!
The quote says God, but it doesn’t really matter if you believe in a deity or not for this to be true. The point is that the universe is awesome. It is one big amazing masterpiece. Your job as an artist is to re-‘VIEW’ the universe. You interpret it, not copy it. You learn from it, not teach it. You stay informed by it, not ignorant of it.
It takes courage to compete with someone you know is going to win. Imagine being Michael Phelp’s rival over the past 8 years. But the truth is you aren’t competing directly against universe unless you are either so ignorant of the universe that you think you are at the center of it (You’re not, by the way) or you don’t think about it at all. But the best way to create the most fantastic art is to know your world, your universe. Pay attention to the sounds, tastes, smells, images, textures of the universe. Then filter it all through ‘you’ and out will come unique and individual creative work.
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Drawing by Marty Coleman, who has a talking paintbrush that posed for this drawing. Her name is Penelope.
Quote by Patti Smith, who lusts after Penelope but can’t have her.
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I have been competing all morning to get #2 of Competition Week done. Here it is!
Naked is good when you are appropriately showing your true self to those whom you want to show yourself to. Being vulnerable, telling who you really are, your struggles, successes, failures, flaws, highlights – those are all in the ‘naked is good’ category and people respond to it. It makes you MORE popular and endearing to your friends, fans, followers, customers, clients, to see a well-rounded version of you.
Naked is bad when you are inappropriately showing your stupidity, desperation, insensitivities, and disrespect. You aren’t choosing to be intentionally vulnerable, you are making a fool of yourself. You are ruining yourself in the eyes of others. You aren’t seeing yourself clearly, otherwise you would never expose yourself the way you are.
Most of the people I know who could possibly be considered my competitors in one field or another are good friends or at least respectful acquaintances. I would be willing to help them to some degree and I know they would do the same for me. But in business if someone is directly competing with me for specific business I am not going to give them my insights as to why a move they might be making is a bad one.
I am not wishing them ill. I am certainly not designing any activity that would purposely make their business more difficult to run. But I am doing all that I can can to make sure I am the better person for the job and that includes leaving them to their own devices. If they succeed, I am happy for them. If they don’t, I am going to take advantage of the void they create.
What about you, what do you think of this idea?
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Drawing by Marty Coleman, who doesn’t have many enemies.
Quote by Napoleon Bonaparte, who had a lot of enemies.
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I spoke at Blog World NY last week. I spoke on ‘Content Procrastination’ but my takeaways from the conference were mostly about Social Media. I am coming up with some ‘secrets’ I learned there. They are secrets because I am making them up now, as I go. They are not from any particular presentation or interaction.
I often find myself wanting traditional media to pay attention to me. I like reporters, anchors, journalists, videographers, photographers and I like when they want to tell my stories. But it is important form me to remember I am also the media. I am the social media. So are you. The traditional media look to us in social media to help them just as we want them to help us.
The reason it is important to realize this is power. Because traditional media has been around, is established and has clout in terms of information distribution and status, we think it is equal to ‘making it’. We get attention from traditional media and we have arrived. In some ways that is true. But when you think of it, social media is the media that goes viral, not traditional.
In other words, don’t be fooled into thinking you need traditional media to validate who you are. It helps, but there are all sorts of ways to get your company, ideas, books, merchandise, self, vision out there in the world.
Use them all, alert the Social Media!
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Drawing by Marty Coleman, who drinks social media with cream and sugar.
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See, I told you procrastination was a good thing…Wait, I MEANT to tell you but I didn’t get around to it, sorry.
It’s true, for all the angst and wringing of hands over procrastination it’s really important to discern when you are being a ‘procrastinating’ person and when you are being a ‘hundred mile an hour control freak type A Energizer bunny who is going to have a heart attack if you don’t slow down a bit’ person.
How do you know the difference? When you are the latter type you get injured. You get burnt out, you hurt yourself and others, you hate your life, you don’t see the big picture, you don’t see the small picture. You barely see anything at all. If you are the former type, a true procrastinator, then you see the world passing by and you are too afraid, too lazy, too paralyzed, to oblivious to your true self to take a step.
Be honest and look at yourself, you do know which one you are. Your world will not collapse if you admit it to yourself or others. All the others already know the truth anyway, you really just have to admit it to yourself.
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Drawing by Marty Coleman, who is Type P.
Quote by Ellen DeGeneres, who has to quit stalking me.
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I know today will whoosh right by, but stop and smell the procrastination, won’t you?
As I have gotten older I increasingly am aware of how many things can go wrong at the last minute of a project or upcoming event. As a result I really do try to get organized and prepared with plenty of time. And even WITH that mindset I am always seeming to be down to the wire in my preparations.
I am expecting it to be the same with my presentation on procrastination and content creation at Blog World next week (Wed. June 6th). This is drawing #5 of the procrastination part, but it will include a lot more I still need to get together. I hope I don’t have too many interruptions but if I do I at least feel I have a strong foundation prepared. We shall see!
Here is what I am thinking about today to include in my presentation. The act of being deliberate in your content creation, working away at it as best you can, is showing respect to those you will give your content out to. It’s no different than arriving late for something and knowing in advance you were going to be late and leaving late anyway. That, to me, shows disrespect for those awaiting your arrival. Not preparing your work properly is the same thing, right?
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Drawing by Marty Coleman, who doesn’t like the sound of the whoosh
Quote by Douglas Adams, who wonders how much whoosh a woodchuck whooshes if a woodchuck would chuck whooshes.
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I put it off as long as I could, but it’s day #4 of the Procrastination series and of my journey to Blog World NY to talk about it.
When I think about dying my worst fear is that all the artwork I have done over the decades will be lost. That it will be so disorganized, so hard to find and sort through, that no one will want to do it and it will just disappear eventually. I have a lot of things I want to get done still, but I have done a lot of things so far and I want them recorded and stored in a way that others can see or hear about them later.
I have to leave things undone each day, and many days I leave them undone on purpose because I don’t feel like working so hard at it. But in the end I keep coming back to my tasks, both the current art creation tasks and the cataloging and organizing of my prior work. It’s not as if it’s going to end since as soon as I get everything organized on CD or DVD another technology comes along that demands it be done all over again. For example, I have been going through old family photos this past Memorial Day weekend and I came across a floppy disk full of images. That was modern and safe at one point but now it’s ancient technology I can’t access without spending money on it.
What is your greatest fear in dying and do you put off dealing with it? Why so?
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Drawing and commentary by Marty Coleman, whose many scribbles are unaccounted for.
Quote by Pablo Picasso, whose every scribble is pretty much accounted for.
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