Branding Thoughts

In atypical fashion (as of recently), I'm up late following an 8 hour workday and then a mad 2 1/2 hours finishing the 12-page annual report for my grade school (some pro bono work to pad my portfolio).

So I've been doing some reading online about branding, and also about writing. If I'm going to make good use of my time in SoCal, I'd better position myself so employers can't help but hire me when I come calling. One of the websites I came across recommended finding a short phrase to encapsulate the personality/talents one wants to display.



I think a good starting description for me is "focused communication".



I don't know exactly where I'm going to end up, but my past experiences have been targeting specific audiences (marketing for a website, sports fans, specific media outlets), and I'd like to think I have a knack of finding the right language to speak to intended audiences. This goes for speaking also (thinking back to ISI days) or even shared meals. I can talk about *stuff* but I'd much rather be focused and intentional with those around me.



Click for the full article -- she uses Queen Latifah as an example of a strong personal brand -- unexpected, but a propos to be sure.

Food for Thought

or maybe even ideas to develop into something more official someday:

#1 - The Philosophress is big on personality types (Myers-Briggs, etc). I think it'd be novel to trace elements of all the personality types through Scripture (life of Christ, New Testament, etc) to examine if I could discover vignettes that would speak/resonate with each personality. The Bible is universal, speaking to all peoples and cultures, no?

#2 - With all of the wildfires and such, folks who live elsewhere have been joking that the entire state will one day go up in flames (or break off from the continent due to an earthquake). My hypothesis is that California has already distanced itself from the rest of the country sociologically/idealogically and doesn't realize it just yet.

That's it...discuss amongst yourselves, or leave a comment. I thought up these ideas first, so I don't want to see any similar nonsense published by one of the 6 people who read this blog...

Wisdom of the Philosophress

Lots of good things happening out here in the Midwest -- good conversations with friends, accumulating additional information for a job transition, and recharging with family. I had totally forgotten this email The Philosophress wrote to me about a month ago, and of course I will share on here for posterity -- it's good enough to remember and reference often.

Take time to recharge and take care of yourself, maintain your health, and make
progress on the house and job fronts as well…but maybe try also to think of your
life as a novel. A big change or surprising plot point is all that more
effective on readers when the author has used foreshadowing, right? So while you
have many other things going on in your life that are the primary focus of your
novel, try to be motivated by the beauty and appropriateness of foreshadowing
the big career/location move coming up many chapters from now, interweave those
little details here and there (the steps you should take to start preparing for
the career change) so that you can see that the theme was there all along and
the resulting ‘plot point’ is intuitive, logical, fluid, pleasing, and
completely not overwhelming (because it’s been subtly anticipated).

For someone who is well-versed in literary devices, this is of course music to my ears. And a good reminder for the times when I get discouraged and confused with my current situation.

Another's Perspective

So I've been trying to do more reading (both online and off) as a way of keeping my mental state from becoming part of the California slush. I keep trying to find the right words to describe the atmosphere out here, and it turns out this guy (BldgBlog) does a fairly thorough job.

First of all, my perspective has been negatively colored, and I think he gives a more positive spin on the advantages of living in LA. Although I'm technically 90 minutes (sans traffic) away from LA, it's a fairer comparison than, say Chicago. And I do believe there's a large amount of truth in his description.

I will take a couple of his points and do my own riff. I will agree that people have strong feelings toward LA, Chicago, and New York, and will gravitate more toward one than another. Places and people are different. The very things about LA that he counts as advantages are just opposed to my own personal values and what I need to succeed. No one cares in LA, and no one is out to get to know you apart from what you can do. I'm more of a thinking kind of man lost in an urban sprawl of doers. I'm a deep kind of guy in a place that just wants to go fast -- literally (I've become desensitized to the sight of all the Ferraris, Maseratis, Aston Martins and Porsches rushing to beat me to the next red light each morning). In the one sense, LA is good for people wanting to start over or make something of themselves, but totally unproductive for someone who's more complex than a 15-second conversation over loud music in a bar.

The LA culture basically states the collective We is more defining than anything the well-intentioned individual brings. It's isolation surrounded by people and stuff and concrete wasteland. Any success or respite from the teeming masses will quickly be undone once the tide of fashion or public taste shifts, and then your accomplishments will be ordinary or irrelevant once more. LA is at once a conglomeration of everything and a statement of nothing permanent.

If I want isolation, I'll go for a weekend hike in the woods, and if I want to swim against the current I'll jump in the river. Nothing grows deep in this desert -- there's no place for root in the sand and clay. Fertile soil and wide open spaces lie elsewhere.

Aye, Cap'n! We're Listing!

So I pop on to write something on the ol' blog, and there's apparently a blog on To-Do Lists. I know The Philosophress has a soft spot in her heart for lists (we have a book of them somewhere), but now there's a whole blog!

I took a couple minutes scanning and came across this one. Some of that sounds too ambitious to me, but there were a few that resonated with me. Maybe one of these days life will settle down enough that I'll be able to take some time, dream some dreams, and put one foot in front of the other...

On My Reading List

So I came back to California with two books, Please Understand Me II, about personality types, and What Should I Do With My Life?, an series of interviews with various people struggling to find fulfillment despite life's distractions. Two good books for me to have around at this point in time.

Today was a horrific day at work (emotionally), and tomorrow I have a 7am meeting where (hopefully) I'll be offered some contract work to design & layout the annual report for my old grade school. Then there's the 8:30am meeting at work where the bank president gets on a conference call to explain why he agreed to let Merrill Lynch buy the bank last month, now that we've seen their CEO forced into retirement and their stock has lost half its value. Let's hope I can get some rest and not oversleep my alarm by 3 hours like I did this morning.

A New Tack

Well life is flying by, and I seem to be forgetting more than I'm remembering these days, so what better way to immortalize the day's/week's happenings than on the internet? Yes, I'm a nerd. We'll see exactly how much staying power this idea has, but I figure I'll start, then quickly proceed to bed.

This week has been interesting to say the least, as the housing market, NC job market, and what's most sensible for deepening the marriage do not appear to be converging into anything coherent anytime soon. So I've taken the past several weeks "off" mentally, happily frolicking in the hills of North Carolina for a weekend (an amazing place, and more thoughts to come on that topic, to be sure). But on the professional front, I'm trying to get some additional perspectives on the job future. At The Philosophress' suggestion, I've begun thinking about industry professionals I can connect with who have the type of job I want in 5-10 years. I know some folks who work over at Disney, so hopefully I can find a way to sit down with someone in communications/media relations over there over the next couple weeks. The Hegemom may be able to set up a meeting with her company's Marketing VP while I'm in Indy for Thanksgiving, and I'm pursuing connections and talk with some people with/connected to ND.

I've also adjusted my resume to the "non-sequential" variety, putting relevant experience first (on the front page) and all the other stuff at the bottom. I hope it presents my skills more clearly. Right now, I'm still looking at the education sector, but I'm hoping that these pending meetings will help me figure out some businesses to target in addition. The other fun part: once tax season starts in January, I'm probably locked into SoCal until June. Of course, if I look at the housing market, that's locked in for another 2-5 years...good times!