I grew up in Bedford, Texas. I had two friends in my neighborhood: Will and Layne. They never hung out with each other, though. Not sure why. Anyway, I grew up being best of friends with both, and they both moved out of state before finishing high school.
I’ve found Will, but Layne Spencer is still somewhere out there in the ether. He had moved with his parents to Haltom City or Watauga during junior high, then they were going to move to Tennessee. Not sure if they were going closer to Memphis or Nashville. Anyhow, he would have been part of the Class of 1995.
If you’re out there, Layne, I’ve been looking for you. Just want to know you’re alive and well. Shoot me a comment if you read this.
What are your motivations for writing? Are you driven to be recognized? Are you hoping to be understood? Are you compelled to write?
I cannot be as forthright when I blog. That is obvious. I cannot share my thoughts in an uncensored manner. To do so would be careless and inconsiderate. But the urge to write is so strong. I have fragmented myself across so many avenues in an attempt to draw readers that I have watered down my message beyond hope.
No one will search for this particular blog. Not many, anyhow. But we as people are judgmental. If I share my thoughts on one subject on a different blog, I risk losing the people who are only interested in a niche.
I have no ultimate solution just yet. But for the record, writing to the public sucks.
It’s the question I’ve been asking myself for more than a decade, but only recently took seriously. It’s inevitable. The older we get, the more we come face to face with the reality of our own mortality. The limited scope of our lives. We are but a breath… a vapor.
And during that breath, we make choices… we touch people… hopefully, we love a few. And those people, though headed down the same path of inevitability, are left behind for a moment to consider our lives, and whether we lived a life of significance.
What kind of legacy will you leave behind? What kind will I leave behind? I hate to ask the question, because attached to it lies the unavoidable realization that my wife would be without a husband and my daughter without a father. I can’t bear that thought. I need to be here for both of them.
I choke back tears during these moments of vulnerable clarity. I choke them back for fear that my wife will see or hear, and she will lose confidence in me. She cannot know how much I care about her provision and comfort.
Men have failed in this family before. Men have jumped ship and remarried. They have abandoned their children to the cold harsh, spiteful, uncaring world. They have died prematurely. They have left behind brokenness. This cannot continue. THIS WILL NOT CONTINUE. I have drawn a line in the sand. Here and no further. Brokenness will not mark this family any longer. Men WILL be faithful to their wives. Fathers WILL nurture, protect, and impart value to their children. This WILL be a family built on a firm foundation. A city who’s foundation and maker is God.
I am but a miserably weak person. I am flesh made from dust. I will die. But not today. And not tomorrow. I am trusting in my God to carry on… to provide me the opportunity to love and provide for and to nurture my family. I believe that God will preserve me to change family history. To build something new. Left alone, we are the sum of our broken and wounded parts. With God, all things are possible. Resurrection from the dead is within our grasp. He is a father to the fatherless. He is the firm foundation. He is the reason my family will be restored to a glory we have only dreamed of.
He is the reason my family will outshine all former generations. He is the reason we will bring honor to our forefathers. He is the reason seeds of righteousness sown over centuries will be reaped in one magnificent harvest.
I love my daughter, Katie. I love my wife, Heather. They mean everything to me. I love my parents, my sister, my mother in law, my grandparents, and my close friends. I don’t know what exact legacy I will leave behind because I am in no way ready to leave. But I pray it will be a legacy of restoration… a physical proof of the redemptive power of our living God.
I’ve recently realized that I’m spread too thin. It’s obvious, actually, but painfully so since I became a father. Family comes first, and that’s not just a cliche to abuse. But in the realm of work and blogging and personal branding, I’ve put myself in the awkward position of owning too many websites and delegating too little.
Some changes are going to be made around here. You can already see this in play if you visit my culture blog, which is my flagship website. The site now sees anywhere from 8-12 contributors each week, and I’m rarely one of them. These writers are contributing some entertaining and thought provoking perspectives on American culture, and it’s a pleasure to work with them.
The next step is build the brand of several other sites without promoting my name at the same time. Each site is a unique brand, and should stand on it’s own merit. This helps keep branding steady when you begin to delegate most of the work to other people.
Whether it’s Twitter, blogging, or social media, I’ve found that it’s too easy to be “branded” one particular thing: i.e. a blogger, an SEO, a copywriter, a social media marketer, a reputation manager, a PR guy, etc. Those are hats I wear, but not who I am. And I’ve fought against being labeled one particular title for the past several years.
It wouldn’t suck to be considered an “expert” in one particular field, except I’ve had a notoriously short attention span and find the switching of hats to be a refreshing way to keep work interesting. Not to mention that some day I will finish writing my first book, and I don’t want to face a crowd of people who refuse to accept me as an artist because I’m a marketer of one fashion or another.
So guarding your reputation is important, though Madonna has taught us how successful a person CAN be at reinventing herself. Still, without global Madonna-like exposure, it is still hard to imagine getting the public to accept a guy who doesn’t have a deeply moody and creative starving artist background. Sue me. I don’t want to starve. Does that make me less poetic? Some say “yes.”
To those people, I say that their version of poetic is pitiful and limited to a selfish, self-serving person who has neglected family and personal maturation in order to excel at a talent/skill. I think a man who has experienced marriage, perseverance, compromise, the birth of his children, and the shiftings/growing pains of fatherhood - this is the kind of man who can speak to the human condition. Maybe he isn’t the one to play on our hidden desires to remain brooding teenagers forever. But he knows love, fear, risk, loss, and satisfaction on a level no isolated artist could imagine.
Here’s hoping that someday someone agrees with me.
There are days like today when I feel ridiculously swamped and drowning in a back log of work that the very idea of my wife looms like an oasis in the desert. I picture her lovingly caring for our daughter and all I want to do is be with them, taking in the beauty of their existence while I’m at work. If only I could be a fly on the wall, and see how they interact and how our beautiful Kathryn is growing day by day in the presence of awesome women like her mother, grandmothers, and aunt. They share a part of her growing up that I miss, and that very realization pierces my heart with a little pang.
I miss my wife. She is this priceless treasure I’ve been blessed out of my gourd to share life with. She has strengths in precisely the areas of my greatest weakness and lack. Times like this, my heart wells up with gratitude. My heart is so full. Words are my enemy when I want to discuss her value and worth in my eyes.
Of course, there are still moments when I wonder who this woman is and we bicker and argue at least weekly. I wouldn’t claim otherwise. But I love her fiercely. I long for her with my whole being. And I daydream of falling asleep beside her as the cool spring breeze causes trees in bloom to sway before us.
Some day soon, that dream will be come true. It will.
It’s my pleasure to announce that tomorrow I will be joining the search marketing team at MarketNet in Dallas. MarketNet is one of the few true full-service interactive marketing agencies in the Dallas / Fort Worth area. With a constantly growing staff of 30+ hard working, creative individuals, MarketNet has established itself as one of the premiere agencies in DFW.
I will be assuming the role of senior search specialist for several of MarketNet’s clients as I do my best to fill the shoes of the much beloved Bill Hartzer who recently joined Vizion Interactive (the company I worked for last year). It’s an odd twist of fate, yet an ideal situation for all parties involved.
I will continue to blog at CultureFeast.com, ReputationAdvisor.com, and my other pet projects as time permits. I’ll also still be available around the clock via Twitter (username - danielthepoet).
This completes the “news” with a new year, new baby in the family, and new company. Wish me the best, and I hope to see some of you at a conference or two before year’s end.
Daniel Dessinger
It’s been extremely frustrating for me to see the rise and growing popularity of linkbait over the past two years. Only a small percentage of these exploitative or list-based posts contain content worth reading. But they strike a chord with the public. What do people really get out of reading linkbait?
Most often, they get a list of ways to improve their lives in some way, shape, or form. Everyone’s on the fast track to retirement and big money, and we’ve become addicted to lists and tips and tricks as we fantasize about reaching the American dream.
I’ve turned down several opportunities to make good money writing linkbait. Not all were based on my latent snobbery… but most were. In the end, I see fluff for what it is, and I despise myself for having participated in it at all. We’re building one big hype machine with all the linkbait floating around on Digg, Reddit, Propeller, Mixx, and Stumble Upon. We’re building something we can’t maintain forever. This too shall pass.
There are only so many ways you can give tips for marketing or blogging success. Eventually, you face the same problem every blog faces: repetition is the kiss of death. Once each blog has covered the quality content they envisioned, they move on to linkbait. Once the linkbait machine has given up the death gurgle, expect little more than repetitive news coverage. News is the one constant thing that will give us information we haven’t already covered. Of course, once we get to the point where most blogs are rehashed news reports, you’ll realize that you can get more professional coverage on CNN, ESPN, or somewhere that’s been doing this for a lot longer than you, and you’ll have to decide if continuing on is really worth it.
Every fad has a shelf life. Every fad reaches a tipping point, and eventually finds itself replaced by something more relevant, exciting, or hyperfocused. What will take the place of blogs? Who can say? Probably some sort of live vidcasting where you can see paparazzi literally chasing Britney Spears down the street. Why settle for a written account when you can hang out with the vermin who monetize celebrity mishaps? It’s coming. Just wait. You’ll probably think it normal by then, too.
