Not My Holiday Gift Guide

Today I was going to post my holiday gift guide. The one in which I would remind you all about the books I've written and the coaching programs I offer that make great holiday gifts and how buying from people like me supports small business. But I couldn't bring myself to hit publish. It felt too soon to go back to business as usual. At least not publicly. Not after Friday. Not just yet.

I've been quiet since then. I haven't been doing much of my usual social media thing. But I have been reading and watching. I obsessed with CNN's coverage for much of Saturday. I'm like an addict when these tragedies occur. I find myself unable to press the off button on the remote or even to change the channel. I shed tears for children and adults I never met.  I felt the collective anguish of so many others. I tried to make sense of something that will never make sense. And it was only when I realized I had seen the same interview three times that I managed to pull myself away from one medium and move myself to another.

I read the Facebook posts and the Twitter feeds. People weighing in on their sorrow and their feelings about gun control and how we deal with mental illness in our society. But I continued to refrain from posts of my own.

Not that I don't have a lot to say about gun control and mental illness. Or about some of the outlandishly insensitive statements made by the many who did choose to make their feelings known.

I was simply unable to find any words that seemed adequate. I still can't.

I cannot begin to fathom what those children and adults who were murdered went through in their final moments, nor those who witnessed it. No amount of empathy can come close to replicating the emotions of the parents and families who have lost their loved ones to horror and need to now try to figure out how to move on. 

What is easier for me to articulate is that I am struck, once again, by our inability to stop and pause, to take in the enormity of a situation like this and to demonstrate a modicum of sensitivity. To be quiet. 

Instead we fill the band waves with endless conversation and posturing about what needs to be done and what should be done to prevent this in the future. 

We don't stop. We don't pause. We don't allow ourselves to feel the magnitude of such a tragedy. We spew whatever we feel like the next day on the social network of our choice. We vent our rage, our disbelief. Some just ignore and before taking a breath are once again tweeting pictures of the Christmas cookies they just baked, offering up the ten reasons to dump your man or how to have a "killer book signing." To say I found that offensive and insensitive is simply an understatement.

Which is why it felt too uncomfortable for me to hit publish on the cheery holiday gift guide post I had ready to go without acknowledging what happened in Newtown, Connecticut on Friday.

Not that I don't want you to buy my wares. I do. I have a business and a living to earn, but I did need to press pause and reflect. At least for one more day. It seemed the right thing to do.

A Confession And A Warning

I haven't been blogging as much as I normally do or I would like to. Today was the day I was going to do it. Sit myself down in the very expensive Herman Miller Aeron chair I invested in when I first embarked on life as a solopreneur. The one  that is supposed to make it more comfortable for my bottom to stay in one place for an extended period of time, set my famous egg timer and get to it.

But I strayed. Every time I opened up Safari and logged into my blog I had to endure the latest headline of the moment flashing across CNN. Politics. Politics. Politics. The Polls say this. The Polls say that.

And I realized why I hadn't been blogging. It wasn't that my chair is really not comfortable. It is. It wasn't that I had nothing to say. I always have something to say. Sometimes it just makes more sense than others.

It's that I've been trying to stay away from commenting on what I think about the incessant commentary. The drama of the political theater. All those people saying ridiculous things and acting like they have divine insight into what the outcome of this election will be, when the truth is the only powerful source most of them are connected to is their bank account.

I've been trying to stick to my subject matter. The stuff of living and working as a solopreneur with a post-corporate view. But I confess. I cannot. If this blog is going to thrive on new content in the next month, my political viewpoints are going to sprout up. That might make some of you happy. And others not so.

But I have to. Especially since my opinion will never be counted in a Poll. You see I don't answer the phone if I don't recognize a number. Just to prove my point I broke my rule this evening.

The phone rang. I saw it was an 877 number but I picked it up anyway. Just in case, one of those 'poll of polls' was actually going to ask for my opinion.

It wasn't. It was a solicitation for money. But if it had been a poll  this is what I would have said.

One debate does not make a President. Especially when the best of show is someone with multi-personalities and opinions that change as often as he does his nicely pressed shirt.

And then I would have asked why so little is being said about  the glaring omission of women's issues in the debates. How can a conversation include health care and not bring up women?

Of course, my marketing background knows that even if I did answer the phone, the kind of questions asked leave no room for open-ended answers, much less my questions. Which is just one more reason for me to express them here.  And of course, on Election Day.

Earthquakes and Hurricanes and Flooding, Oh My!

There is much to fear if you let it when you live in a city like New York. My mother taught me at a young age how to hold my pocketbook on the subway so my wallet would not get picked and to never to stand too close to the edge of the platform in the event a crazy came by and pushed you in. There is the fear of that giant crane on the construction site next door that with one big swing could come crashing into your building. Or unsecured scaffolding that could crush those walking underneath. Being stuck in an elevator or worse, a subway car between stations crosses many minds. I have a personal fear of falling through a subway grate. And lets not forget the big one, the fear of a terrorist attack that 9/11 proved to be far too real.

But you learn to adjust and take it in stride. No one who lives here for an extended period dwells in fear. Those who do usually wind up moving someplace else.

Earthquakes are not on your average New Yorker's fear list. Nor are hurricanes. Yet in the span of one week our fair city has experienced both. As I write this Irene has been downgraded to a tropical storm and the next big worry is how much flooding will occur. This all just two weeks away from the anniversary of 9/11. All of this has tested even the hardiest of New Yorkers. So it was no wonder there was an edge in the air the last few days as bottled water and batteries disappeared from the shelves. We had reason to worry and to prepare. And I applaud Mayor Bloomberg in how he readied the city. Because this is after all Mother Nature we are talking about. We can't control what she decides to do. But we can control our actions, get our go bags ready and stock the house with supplies.

Who can't seem to control themselves through any of these potential disasters is the media. Their job at times like this is to keep us informed and in touch, and dare I say, perhaps even calm us, not to exacerbate and make the potential of real disaster seem even greater than it is. But that was not the case. I liken them to addicts in search of a fix. Their fix being some fear-inducing lead-in that will get you to turn them on or click through a link to their website. A reason to change the inflection of their voice as though they were acting in a play on Broadway instead of reporting the news.

When I was a kid during the very turbulent sixties you looked to a Walter Cronkite to steady you. Today finding anyone who carries any of his soothing characteristics is rare. I stopped watching CNN yesterday when Wolf Blitzer led with roof tops blowing off the houses in Virginia and then stopped with no details as to whether it was one roof or a dozen or where in the very big state of Virginia that was. He wanted me to hang around for his next update. I didn't. I switched channels. And I switched and I switched. I was in search of some sort of  sensibility in reporting as people up and down the East Coast were waiting in trepidation for when the hurricane would hit them.  I wanted information not hype. I wanted calm not frenzy. I wanted reporting that served as a resource to the community, not tied up in ratings and advertising revenue and a desire to be #1 but targeted at keeping the public informed.

For the record I settled where I should have started. With my old friends at NY1 News, which in full disclosure I once worked for. I prefer the even inflection and well thought out questions of  Pat Kiernan and the saneness and intelligence of their meteorologist, John Davitt, to any of my other choices.

The next big fear is the flooding factor. But I will add one more to that. The fear that if the media consistently creates more hype instead of more reporting, we will all start to tune out. And then like the boy who cried wolf, we will not know when we should really be paying attention.


Do you think the media did their job reporting on Hurricane Irene?