You Can Make The Internet Meaningful By Doing Stuff Offline.

I had never heard of neuralgia until a few days ago. It is pain in one or more nerves caused by a change in neurological structure of the nerves rather than by the excitation of healthy pain receptors. In other words, the nerves tell your brain to feel intense stimulus even when there isn't any.

It is painful. It is debilitating. And it afflicts someone I've come to know over the past few months. She has suffered with it for the better part of a decade but most people didn't even know it.

Most of the time, Tinu Abayomi-Paul's condition manifests itself as chronic back pain. This time is different. It is severe enough that she will be undergoing surgery and decommissioned for a month, maybe longer.

This is especially challenging for her because, like me, she has a small business. In her case, she has two micro-businesses with an emphasis on search engine optimization and social media. And because both businesses rely extensively on providing services, she will not generate any income while out.

What do small business owners do when there is no safety net? 

Sure, some business owners are like me. You set something aside to weather the storm and hope it's enough. This time around, I'm cutting it close after recovery. But that's a story for a different time.

I'm only mentioning it now because Abayomi-Paul is facing something similar but different. She didn't have the luxury of being ready to weather an unexpected surgery this time around. She needs help.

She isn't asking for charity. All she wants is to work through recovery. So Abayomi-Paul had the novel idea to run an Indiegogo campaign to raise the money she needs to make ends meet while she recovers. Here's her story, along with some discounted packages that she put together for her campaign.


This is a short 10-day run campaign. It ends next Tuesday and you can find out more information about  Abayomi-Paul on her website Free Traffic Tips. For campaign details and packages, visit Indiegogo.

Do keep in mind that I'm taking a leap of faith as this isn't a pure endorsement. I haven't worked with Abayomi-Paul before, but I do know plenty of people who have. Mostly, I've enjoyed some banter with her as part of a social network group. I've also read her content and watched a few instructional videos that she has produced. She knows her stuff without all the bull that other people like to spread.

Who knows? It might make a great case study or best practice as one of those stories for the other Internet — the one that people sometimes forget about in favor of big data, big numbers, and big distractions.

We can make a meaningful online experience by doing things offline.

Yes, there really is an Internet with deeper purpose. It's the one that many pros abandoned so they could write business card books about social. So you don't hear about this stuff as much anymore because it doesn't draw traffic. If you want visitors, you need to write about landing on this page instead.

But hey, that's mostly okay. I don't begrudge anyone an opportunity to enjoy a silly cat video or hawk some ROI (oddly) to companies that will never appreciate why Dawn Saves Animals without the benefit of coupon codes, junk mail, or mountains of content.

You see, it's all very simple really. They do something instead. And then what they did lands online. It's something I hope my kids learn. Legacies can be written about online, but we make them offline. I think Abayomi-Paul deserves that chance. Many people do. I'll write about a few more soon enough.

But today, given all the changes coming down on search engine optimization, maybe this will be a great opportunity to talk to someone who knows about it. And all she is really asking for in return is a little time offline so she can come back and deliver something meaningful online. So what do you think?

Is this a worthwhile case study for business practitioners who have the misfortune of a medical emergency? Or maybe you might like to hear from someone else about Abayomi-Paul? Kami Huyse, Anne Weiskopf, Jennifer Windrum, and Ann Handley were among the first funders. Or maybe you would like to talk about something else all together? I'm fine with that too. The comments are yours.

Thinking Still Beats Searching When You Need Four Gallons.

My wife had a question the other day, but it wasn't her question. The question belonged to my son and he didn't want to ask me. He thought he knew what I would say. He was wrong, but close enough.

The question was a puzzler of sorts. It was a problem from his math teacher. And any student who turns in the answer Tuesday (today) will receive extra credit. The reason my wife asked me wasn't a puzzler. She wanted him to receive the extra credit. (What parent wouldn't? Besides me, I mean.)

Maybe I should clarify that point. I don't want him to receive extra credit. I want him to learn it. And given that he had the whole weekend to figure it out and it was only the Friday before the long Labor Day weekend, there was no rush on my part. 

How can you make four gallons if you only have a three gallon bucket and a five gallon bucket?

I told him to wait until I had finished my part of the shopping list, groceries for the meals I would cook for the week ahead. Even then, I said, expect some help but not the answer. He didn't want that. 

A few minutes later, I looked over at him. He had moved on to another problem. Specifically, he was trying to figure out which route to take as he transported his stolen loot from a bank to an escape vehicle.  Right. He was playing PayDay 2 on the Xbox. 

"Why aren't you working on the problem?" I asked.

"I already spent 20 minutes working on it in class," he said.

"Well, obviously that isn't enough," I suggested. 

"It's all right," he said. "I already looked it up." 

"You did what?"

"I did what you were probably going to tell me to do," he said.

"You did what?" 

"I looked it up. Done."

"You looked it up, where?" 

"Google."

Ah, Google. If there has ever been a company of smart people responsible for the dumbing down of America, it has to be Google. All students have to do is drop in a few key words from their math problems and poof — they can find an answer while unceremoniously learning nothing in the process.

"I didn't tell you to look it up," I said. "I was going to give you a hint."

The reason I wanted to give him a hint was because the puzzler is not the real problem. Although the question suggests you need to measure four gallons of water using a three gallon bucket and a five gallon bucket, the real problem is something else. It's what stops most people after 20 minutes of class.

In order to solve the problem, you really need to establish what X might be. And in this case, X is really whatever it takes to make gallon of water. I wouldn't have told him that, but intended to point him in that direction by asking what stopped him from answering the question. Except, I couldn't anymore. 

Google beat me to it. And today, all across the country, Google is going to beat other teachers and parents too. It's not the company's fault, but it is creating a problem. Sometimes it pays to look something up. Other times, it is much more rewarding to figure it out. Figuring teaches you to think and rethink. 

The most creative (and possibly efficient solutions) aren't online. 

One of my favorite authors of all time never wrote any fiction. His name is Richard Feynman. He was a scientist and winner of a Nobel Prize in physics. The reason he won it is punctuated by his affliction for figuring things out as opposed to looking them up. By thinking, he often debunked popular theories. 

It had been that way all his life. Even when he was 11, Feynman started to think his way around radios. Eventually, he moved on to fixing burglar alarms, amplifiers and other gadgets too. It was in his nature. He seldom looked anything up. Reinventing the wheel, for him, often made the wheel better. 

There are dozens of stories that underscore his point in his books and books about him. He said it over and over and over again. Even when the New York Times wrote an article about his legacy in 1992, it recounted how Murray Gell-Mann described The Feynman Algorithm to solve everything. 

What is the algorithm? It's simple enough. You write down the problem. You think very hard. And then you write down an answer. For many years, this phenomenon called thinking is what set American students apart from students in the rest of the world despite those international tests that suggested otherwise.

Most students, he observed when teaching abroad, are taught to memorize the answers. But he preferred to teach students to think through problems rather than always assuming the experts were right. Not only did that inspire new ways to think about things, but it also gave students the ability to apply what they've learned to a completely new set of paradigms and problems. Right. They get good at it.

There are some days that I'm not sure Feynman would feel American students are set apart anymore. Many of our students have been taught to resist the urge to think nowadays. And they are not alone. 

People ask questions online all the time or turn to key word searches to ask things like "how do I get more traffic to my site?" or "how do I get more Twitter followers?" or "who are the influencers in this field and that field?" as if those people can think better than they. There is nothing wrong with that, but I wonder if any of them know that one set of solutions doesn't fit a different set of problems.

Sure, seeing how other people solve their problems can be useful at times. But almost every communication problem is patently unique. You have to think very hard. Besides, just as I told my son, you have to try thinking in order to become a great thinker. It requires practice, just like anything. 

How about you? What do you think? And by that, I mean about anything? The comments are yours. Let's talk.

Lions And Labels And Agendas, Oh My. They Made Me Blind.

"How we can get people to actually solve problems instead of pushing agendas?" — Amy Vernon 

This is a question that has been rolling around in my head since Amy Vernon asked it in response to an open call for conversation last week. My short answer coached the problem in politics, but the problem is much more hardwired into human beings than we might think. If it wasn't political labels that drive the diatribe and prevent problem solving, it would be something else.

It might be religious labels. It might be ethnic labels. It might be occupational labels. Or it might be the books we read. The music we like. The clothes we wear. The activities we pursue. The experiences we've had. The places we live. The places where we were born. The people we know.

We wake up every day with several thousand labels around our necks. We let them shape us and allow them to shape our perception of other people. We make ourselves slaves to them. And there is no end to how many we might make up. It's why we have nice things. And it's why we can't have nice things.

We've been indoctrinated into addiction. It took our entire childhood.

The truth is we spend most of our childhoods being indoctrinated into labels that make life easier and harder because every label carries an agenda. That's the point. Someone invented them to give life directions, expectations, and excuses. And then our parents and guardians conspire to pass them along just as most of us will when we have children too.

They aren't the only ones. Every peer and role model you ever had did the same thing, for better and worse. Many labels are moving targets, falling in and out of popularity with minorities and majorities.

It doesn't really matter what those labels might be. They blind us by casting bigger shadows than the people who wear them, they bind us to limitations and opportunities, and they consciously and subconsciously tint the lens that we wear when we try to solve problems as individuals and groups.

The only people not overtaken by them have to make a conscious effort to recognize them for what they are, strive to be objective even when it feels impossible, and struggle to retain their sense of self-esteem while not subscribing to stereotypes that the greater society values. It's one of the most difficult things anyone can do in life because people are genuinely afraid that all they can be are their labels.

Who would you be if labels didn't define you? Besides happy, I mean. 

I once had a friend who was struggling with motherhood. She insisted that she wasn't a good mother. The idea was pretty absurd to me because my perception of her abilities vastly eclipsed her own self-perception. So I gave it my best shot. She needed to free herself from the shackles of a "good mom."

After I asked her to write down the definition of everything she considered to be a "good mother," we both took a breath to admire the sheer weight of expectations. Without going into too much detail, suffice to say that the label she had placed on a pedestal was unreachable and unachievable.

Mostly, her list included everything she thought her mom did right, the opposite of everything her mom did wrong, several dozen expectations that are currently popular in society, several dozens values dedicated by faith (even though she was agnostic at the time), and so on and so forth. Once she took it all in and could laugh at how grandiose her job description was, I offered an alternative concept.

"Just like your husband married you and not the idea of a 'good wife,' your son wants to be raised by you and not the idea of a 'good mother,'" I said. "If you are you and do everything from a perspective of unconditional love, then you will be better than a 'good mother' because no one can be you better."

You would be surprised how great people can be when they aren't paralyzed by labels. She did fine.

So what does that have to do with solving problems? Almost everything. 

Have you ever noticed that some of the most explosive companies in history have come out of nowhere? There is a reason for that. They are generally started by entrepreneurs solving a specific problem or changing the status quo.

Why can't big companies do the same? Some of them can, but the advantage belongs to the startup in that they haven't saddled themselves with labels, policies and office politics. People focus on the objective at hand, without any other distractions. Their teams aren't always proven as much as they are ready to prove themselves. And whatever idea they've been turning over is all that really matters.

So let's say the problem is more altruistic, like thirsty children. How do we solve it? Charity: Water says the best way to solve it is to build water projects that put clean, drinkable water closer to the source.

All that stands in their way to deliver it is labels. Some people don't like their business model. Some people don't like that the founder is Christian. Some people don't like their partner organizations. Some people don't like that the program helps people abroad as opposed to at home. Some people worry about project sustainability. Some people want to support another charity. And the list goes on.

We add in additional angst if we make a political issue, where political labels complicate the process. Instead of dealing with the problem. Suddenly, who solves how much of the problem under what criteria and conditions as well as how do they go about it all become subject to the agenda purview of this party or that party and all those special interests, with little concern for actual outcome. The net result becomes a thousand-fold document that costs one hundred times more to accomplish significantly less than what is required.

Nobody is exempt and the test is self-evident. Think of an agency that solves our water problem. Now impart different labels on it, one at a time inserting the label ahead of the word agency. Like this: "_______" agency for water.

Christian. Islamic. Jewish. Satanic. Democrat. Republican. Libertarian. Jeffersonian. Secretive. Communist. Domestic. Conservative. Liberal. International. African. Jamaican. Japanese. Home-Based. Government. And so on and so forth. Which one would you give to?

If you're being honest, certain descriptions might have elicited a positive or negative emotional reaction. It might have been slight, but your prejudices exist, possibly based on your proximity or positive and negative experiences with people who have claimed to represent those things or what you have been told to expect from such people. In swapping the labels, you may even forget the problem.

How do you overcome prejudices and agendas to solve problems?

My oversimplified definition of public relations applies here. While I have more academic definitions, I often say that public relations is the art and science of making "we" out of "us and them." If you want to solve problems without being plagued by agendas, the only possibility is to ask people to temporarily check their labels (not their values) at the door.

It's a tall order to be sure, especially because most people don't even know they exist. They do. They exist on a grand scale, such as those who judge us by the color of our skin. And they exist on a small scale such as how much we might weigh or the shine of our shoes. So if you find someone to set those things aside, even for a little while, then hold onto them tight. They are rare individuals.

At least, that is what I think. I would love to know what you think. I'd also love to know what Dr. Steve Nguyen thinks, and Roger Dooley, and Sandeep Gauntam, or anyone who makes psychology a primary interest as opposed to me, about two classes short of that degree (it was my minor).

Of course, we need not stop with psychologists or people with a bent for the human condition. Anyone can chime in, especially Amy Vernon, who opened the box on this relevant topic. And if this topic is too far removed, that's fine too. What would you like to talk about? The comments are open. Let's talk.

How A Little Love For Learning Can Jumpstart A Reader

Summer can be a mixed blessing for most children. While it gives them a little more freedom to play, explore extracurricular activities, and enjoy more free time, it also separates them from their natural love of learning.

The break leaves many of them at a loss after the summer, which is why most teachers set their startup lessons to be either refreshers or benchmarks. They want to know what these children retain over the summer.

Theoretically it works, unless these the children were already slipping in proficiency. Many children are. My daughter is among them.

Despite private school, she ended first grade with an F reading letter level on an A-Z scale, which represents an early reader at the start of first grade (not the end). She landed somewhere in the middle of her peers, which was better than my son did at that age in public school (and he had outperformed most other students there). But it really wasn't good enough.

If we assume that most children drop two reading letters over the summer — because they gravitate to books below their levels, if at at all — then we might also assume students like my daughter would automatically face challenges in second grade. Ergo, even if her new teacher started teaching the class at an H reading level, my daughter would have been critically behind as a student reading at a D level.

You can see the potential problem here, especially because many parents are unfamiliar with the various reading level benchmarks. They simply see their children reading and smile, thinking it's good enough. It's not. My daughter would have been lost after the first few weeks of school.

How parents can develop an accelerated reading program for young students.

Awareness is always the first step. Take some time to become aware of reading level benchmarks and find out where your child finished at the end of the school year. It doesn't matter which benchmarks the school uses — letter, numeric, or Lexille (a.k.a. Lexi). All benchmarks correspond to a grade level.

Some parents just don't know. While I knew my daughter's level this year, we never knew my son's reading level when he was that age. If you don't know, don't panic. Look up the books he or she has read or looked at since the end of the school year. A search with the book title and words "reading level" will usually produce a landing page that corresponds to one or all benchmarks.

Discover books to move them forward. Assume that the books are at their reading level (or a little less) because children (like adults) tend to gravitate toward what they can read easily and not what will improve their reading. Have them read whatever is on hand (or that they have been reading) out loud to demonstrate their strength at that level. You'll immediately get a sense of their proficiency.

Depending on how well the student reads, choose books that are at their level (if they are struggling) and slightly higher. Make sure you double check the approximate level too as all book publishers use different measurements. For example, Penguin Level 2 books are generally first grade books; some "I Can Read" Level 2 books are second grade books; and some Scholastic Level 3 books are second grade books.

Encourage kids to read the books out loud. It doesn't take much time. Between 15 minutes and one half hour of reading time every day is enough to propel them forward. Just remember that from their perspective, natural story breaks make more sense than random page counts or hard time quotas. They'll enjoy reading to a preset goal.

It's also best for parents to pick the books. Sure, children can provide input, but parents need to be aware that young readers pick books based on topics and characters they know. From experience, these better known characters tend to have clunkier writing and thinner story lines. Too many weak stories will cause young readers to become discouraged. So try to pick books with strong stories while paying attention to the language lessons.

Learning words by sight is a tiered process. Any time a student comes across a word that he or she doesn't know, block out everything except the first syllable (or block out everything except the root word) with your fingers. Most of the time, doing so will give them just enough confidence to get it right. And if they struggle, explain any rules that might help: e.g., sometimes "gh" sounds like "f" and sometimes it's silent.

The point is that you always want to help them solve a problem as opposed to reading the words for them (and letting them parrot you). Only when all else fails do you read the word and tell how why they missed it. Then ask them to reread the sentence and pay attention to whether they've mastered the word on the next occurrence. If they haven't, add it to an index card.

Flash card drills help create intangible rewards. Every morning after breakfast and/or after lunch or dinner, my daughter and I now work through flash cards that are mostly made up of missed words. There are only about eight or ten cards to go through one time. (It's important to only go through the pile one time per session to ensure long-term retention.) The only other words I include are instructional words; words that may appear in second grade instructions like "complete," "correct," "length," etc.

If my daughter gets it right with no assistance, we put a mark on the card. When she gets five marks on the card, she keeps the card and rips it up. As she rips these cards up, new ones are added so there are always plenty of cards at various stages of completion.

She thinks of it as an achievement reward and each ripped up card is celebrated. And if she misses a flashcard word in a story, I give her a one-time prompt that she already ripped the word up and we don't want to add it back. She immediately remembers. As an aside, never offer candy or monetary awards because you'll risk teaching them to love the reward and not a love for learning — which I believe is the ultimate goal of any teacher.

When my daughter returns to school this year, she will be well beyond her peers. 

If you read through these accelerated reading steps, then you'll likely be left with one question. Does it work? Within four weeks, my daughter moved from F to K on an A-Z scale. At this pace, she might reach Q by the end of the summer. To put that into perspective, Q is the letter for a fourth grade reader.

A few days ago, I spoke to a group of educators about communication (and I'll be sharing the deck next week). It was during my presentation that I shared one of my observations about education: I have never met a kindergartener who wasn't enthusiastic about school. So if we want to solve the problems with education, then we have to look at what happens between kindergarten and the fourth grade.

I believe reading proficiency is one of the biggest things that happens or, perhaps, doesn't happen. Too many children have not met the reading level required for their grade level. Their parents don't know it.

At yet, reading is the core requirement for every other subject (including math, with its abundant word problems). It seems to me the problem is apparent. Unless the material is easy to read and the problem easily understood, how can they ever hope to understand it or solve it, let alone enjoy it? Exactly.

Literacy is the key to every other subject, along with a love of learning. It needs a little more attention. It needs a little more awareness. It needs more advocates. So how are you spending your summer?

This Too Shall Pass Unless It Doesn't

Six weeks isn't that long of a time. It's about 42 days, a cut above 1,000 hours. Online, it feels like forever. It's such a long time that I tell audiences they only need twice that amount to change the world.

Right. Ninety days was the ideal benchmark I created for Bloggers Unite when I coordinated some of its biggest campaigns. The biggest with Amnesty International changed American foreign policy in Darfur.

I still believe in a 90-day benchmark. As long as you have a base in place, it's the right amount of time to do a campaign without feeling like the task is insurmountable or the outcome too far out. The same can be said for personal goals too. You can rock out a lot in 90 days. I'm around 45 right now.

The two most critical moments for anything: the start time and halftime.

If I stopped today, I would feel pretty miserable. Six weeks only covered the recovery period after my surgery to move from the cancer column to the cancer-free column. The next six weeks matter more.

As careful as I was (and I was careful), I put on an inch or two around my waistline after surgery and lost more definition than expected. It's the price paid for having a forced semi-sedentary lifestyle. I was given explicit orders not to lift anything over ten pounds, be mindful of twists, and no vacuuming.

If I took a snapshot today, most people wouldn't notice unless I had my shirt off. If I did have my shirt off, they might make some pretty crazy assumptions. Specifically, they might think I'm out of shape (me too). But they would also be wrong given a bigger context.

This is what Chris Brogan was driving at as a topic in May. You can find it again in another piece by Geoff Livingston. I've written about it before, talking about how people need to be the verb, not the noun.

My condition is temporal. In six more weeks, I'll be in a different place. These six are all about starting at half my exercise set weight and gradually increasing the amount until I am eventually back or better than pre-surgery. The first two sessions went well, even if I was tired after both.

The next one will be the bigger tell, as it directly includes abdominal muscles. Steady as she goes.

That isn't all there is to it, of course. I'm mindful of my diet and try to find time to walk (as it was the only recovery I was approved to do prior). I make sure I get enough rest. I try not to overdo things.

But the point is pretty simple. A snapshot forces permanence on things that are otherwise ephemeral.

People are easily hung up on snapshots. It's motion that matters.


As individuals or en masse in social media, most people see snapshots as permanent, which is the primary link between my article on the potential failings of isolated big data and the Livingston expose on mean tweets. It proves effective for this article too because ephemerality makes everyone wrong over time.

What most people don't know about any crisis event is that it only represents a moment in time when everyone agrees something bad has already happened. Everything from that point on is malleable.

Barring criminal charges and other liabilities, business executives have a choice to turn things around or close the doors. A personal crisis isn't much different: the crisis event is the moment you realize your company is in decline, your marriage in on the rocks, or your physical condition puts you at a health risk. Any or all of those things might feel like the end of the world. But they aren't, unless you're dead.

The realization is simply your cue to make your next move. You have a choice to do nothing (which is stasis, akin to losing ground at a pace too slow to notice until it's too late), give up (accelerate the bad), or reverse direction and mediate the challenge (have a plan to make things better). There are no other options, no matter how loud any spectators might become.

Right. The loudness of it all doesn't matter nearly as much as people think. Any negative sentiment is more akin to a symptom. Any closure is more likely to link to the disease — bad practices, bad ideas, or bad reactions. And that's why social media and isolated big data based on social media aren't accurate predictors. It's like a poll. It can show you a plot point in the near past, but the future is still wide open.

In other words, the reality of it reads much more like the title. This too shall pass unless it doesn't. Or, as I wrote several weeks ago: when bad things happen, there is very little you can do except find solace in the storm. You find your peace. You let it happen. But once the bad is done, you look for potential.

You make a plan. You press ahead with a positive trajectory. And as long as you set that plan in motion and then double check yourself at halftime, it's nearly impossible to become stuck in the moment or sliding backward. Today, I'm about 45 days better than I was the day I left the hospital and my momentum suggests than every day will be better ahead. How about you? What's your direction?

Being A Big Fish In A Small Pond Works Until The Drought

Say what you will about statistics that claim people have as many as seven careers in a lifetime. I've seen studies that claim anything from five to 11, and wonder what might skew them.

The most common explanations offered up by researchers and reporters — job hoppers, immigrants, and young people — don't account for everything. The simplest answer is job evolution. A worker might make the move to management, opening up new career opportunities. Another employee might be moved from one department to another as a means of keeping them. An expert in one field might retire.

There are dozens of different reasons, but all of it points to one thing. The metaphor about becoming the biggest fish in the pond is rather pointless. It's a myth perpetrated by motivational coaches, training instructors and academics because they are in the business of selling skill sets that suggest expertise.

Careers don't work like they did in the 1950s. The job market has evolved.

The biggest fish in the smallest pond analogy only worked under the most pretentious and restrictive notion of the American dream that led people out into the suburban sprawl. The general concept was pretty clear cut. You graduated from high school, earned a degree for a career, accepted an entry level job, and then stuck with it until somebody promoted you to management, which eventually led to your retirement with a pension and gold watch. My stepdad had one of those dinosaur jobs, sort of.

After escaping foundry work for the airlines industry during its heyday before deregulation, he worked in telephone reservations before transferring to become a passenger services agent, a job track that lasted 40 years through no less than four or five buyouts and mergers while avoiding management.

Why did he turn avoid management? Managers didn't survive mergers. He preferred job security.

The chances of finding a one-track career job like he did (and being happy if not content doing the same thing like he was) is pretty slim. Most of his friends couldn't do it either. They all moved on.

Even if they could do it, there were no guarantees. Careers vanish all the time. Big fish travel agents, postmen, and meter readers have been watching their ponds shrink for some time. Architects, journalists, and visual artists like photographers and videographers are all struggling in the short term.

You can't always count on job trends either. Health care administration is hot right now, but it's anybody's guess what might happen after the aging population doesn't have a bubble. Government jobs remain hot despite the latest rounds of layoffs caused by tax shortfalls, but its growth is not sustainable. Anything in alternative energy has a ton of buzz, but the field is surprisingly erratic given its diversity.

The communication industry as a whole is in kind of a system shock too. Social media might have been exciting for some people, but it has left several disciplines in a state of confusion. Convergence has left people wondering whether public relations, advertising, marketing, social media, etc. are the best tracks to enter the industry. Most of them are disappointed to hear the truth. Almost none of them, exclusively.

In a world with unpredictable rain, it pays to be an amphibian. 

The modern market requires a different kind of thinking, even if human resources and headhunters have been equally slow to embrace the obvious. There are no degrees that are a waste of time. All of them provide skill sets that overlap, provided the student or working professional can enhance them.

The objective isn't to become a specialist anymore. And I'm not suggesting you become a generalist either. The answer lies somewhere in the middle, where you can weave together adaptive skill sets.

Once you have a foundation, through education or experience, look toward enhancing parallel skill sets as they become obvious. This has been the cornerstone of my career course over nearly three decades and it places me in an interesting position if I call recent events an intermission between acts.

The interwoven disciplines of advertising, business, journalism, and psychology have opened up any number of opportunities. Some only require a nudge if I was inclined to make a course correction.

As a stakeholder in several businesses, I have roles ranging from product development to executive management. As a communicator, I have experience as a strategic planner, creative director, journalist, copywriter, author, and some undeveloped talent in design. As an instructor, I could take a turn toward education and write instructional books. Or, if I wanted to, I could always dial back to pick up two classes for a degree in psychology (which has its own growing niche in business modeling). And there are several other skill sets, ranging from hobbies to oddities, that I won't bore you with.

I'm hardly the only one. Chan Luu managed her clothing boutique before becoming a fashion designer. Paul Gauguin was a stockbroker before becoming an artist. Charles Bukowski worked as a postman. Leonardo daVinci was an artist turned scientist, engineer and inventor. Benjamin Franklin was an author, printer, politician, and scientist (among many other things). Most founding fathers had woven careers.

The truth is that until the 1950s, multiple careers were more common than unusual. You almost have to dial back to the dark ages to find lifelong careers or family trades being prized as a profession. And in America, the concept was exceptionally foreign. Most people left Europe to escape the class system.

In fact, until suburbia entered the picture, few people wanted to be stuck with such a low glass ceiling. And nobody really wanted to make it worse with a dramatically tiered tax system either or mandatory social services based on the assumption that they would never make enough to pay for it. That came later, along with the big fish concept that suggested people find smaller and smaller ponds to feel important.

Make no mistake about it. If you recently graduated, your education has only started. Your goal isn't to become indispensable — the proverbial big fish in a small pond. Your goal is to become adaptable — the fish that can walk to the next closest body of water anytime the pool there feels a bit shallow.

The only way to do it is to create a braided career that includes one or two major areas of practice and several closely related minor skill sets that can become areas of practice on relatively short notice. Along with those skills, it also helps to learn something about the stock market. The 401 (k) is not enough to rely on for retirement like pension plans several decades ago.

22 Staples And The State Of Two Internets

The first thing I saw when I woke in the recovery room were the curtains drawn around my bed. They were pale blue, I think. But I can't be certain because that memory is fleeting and already fading.

I only saw them for a few seconds before someone started to guide me out of the haze created by an anesthetic cocktail. It was one of two cocktails that the anesthesiologist let me call a few hours before.

"What's your favorite cocktail?" he asked.

"My favorite safe drink is gin and tonic," I said, because I wanted to be safe.

"That's what this is," he smiled, tapping the syringe. "Gin and tonic. Safe and good. I'll keep you safe."

There aren't any memories as much as fragments after that. I've sorted a couple that make me smile, but most begin in the recovery room. Someone started to ask me questions. She asked me the easy ones first and then worked up to something complex. It's a test to make sure my cognitive functions rebooted.

But I didn't want a test as much as a conversation. So I started asking her questions instead. I wanted to know how was her day was going, how long had she worked there, and why she chose medicine.

They were easy questions, but we eventually worked up to something complex. She was especially interested in my case because the chart made note of this surgery starting with an incidental finding. They found my cancer by accident.

Her husband wasn't so fortunate. His cancer wasn't discovered until he had blood in his urine. He was diagnosed with irreversible bladder cancer. The funeral was a few months ago, and it had deepened her resolve to help people.

"I'm sorry for your loss," I said, consoling her and asking more questions.

"Look at you, worried about me," she smiled. "It was meant to be, you know. It was meant to be that they found yours early."

It wasn't the first time nor was it the last that I would hear those words during my expedited hospital stay. I was scheduled for three nights. I only stayed one. And yet, within those 48 hours when you reflect on and remeasure life, some things make immediate sense like the duality of social connections.

There are two Internets, which is why marketers can't reconcile the space. 

In case you haven't noticed, there are two Internets. There is the one my friend Geoff Livingston wrote about yesterday, with marketers seeing the totality of social media like a very big fish pond and the goal to catch as much fish as possible. Hook, reel, and release. Some companies have teams that do it daily.

Most of them aren't even good fishermen because the only strategy they've come up with to catch more fish is to put out more bait. There is already so much of it floating in the water, untouched, it's a wonder anyone can breathe. And still they add more, daily. It has become so dense that it smacks of pollution.

I was nowhere near it in the first few hours of recovery. I was on the other Internet, which is the one that kept me breathing. I didn't see all the clutter because content surrenders to a shared experience.

Since my wife and I have two children, she couldn't stay in the hospital full time like many people recommended. So I sometimes turned to blog comments and social networks to read and reread the words left by family, friends, and colleagues. Their good thoughts, well wishes, and prayers gave me some added strength while I recovered. I can't thank them enough. Every one of them mattered.

Of course, I didn't just read the words they left for me. I read everything else they shared too. And even though my loosely connected groups of family and friends could be delineated by degree of relation, proximity, or whether we've met in person, not one of them looked like fish nor did any of them ask for bait. This was the Internet where every connection was important and every message mutual.

The intimacy is unmistakeable. The relationships are as real as the one forged between myself and the nurse in the recovery room (and many others along the way). We never met each other before that moment and may never meet again, but we made a connection without any coercion, conjecture, or content creation. By the end of it, I made several more connections too. We went through all of it together, something that even the best connection round ups forget.

Maybe those staples will come out this week, all 22 of them. 

Sometimes we're fortunate and find miracles in faith and modern medicine. While there is plenty more to be done, from my follow up and pending pathology to my recovery schedule and post-recovery rebuild strategy, I feel remarkably blessed to be sitting at my desktop writing something, anything. A week ago, even under the most optimistic scenario, no one could imagine an outcome this good.

Sure, there is some pain here and there and I do get tired as the day presses on, but such challenges seem like nothing compared to those in the first few hours of recovery. It was only a few days ago, my major goals were the kind we all take for granted — breathe without oxygen, drink water without issues, get out of bed with assistance. Nowadays, I'm more likely thinking about work, play, and life changes.

As I alluded to last week, I might be blessed with more time but there is none to waste. There are plans to be made and the more plans the better. But at the same time, I never want to lose sight of the fact that everyone has a journey too. They are all equally grand and challenging, hilarious and heartbreaking.

If you want to change the world you see, you have to start by changing the way you see it. Life is meant to be a shared experience because when we discover more about the people who cross our paths then our own experiences are enriched by them. In other words, my hospital stay is less significant than the hospital experience I took away with a few interesting and inspiring doctors, nurses, and medical technicians. This is how life works.

Online or offline, it hardly matters. But in sticking to the headline thread, suffice to say that this is the side of the Internet where I'd like to invest more time. The state of it is great. It feels good to be back. Nice to meet you, again. How great it would be to catch a movie this weekend. It's a little too soon, maybe.

Killing Me Softly: Cancer

I have said it in a dozen different ways before, but I have never said it more plainly. The quantity of time we have is not as important as the quality. Write it down somewhere and tape it to your computer.

We always want for more of it. We rarely use it wisely. And most of us sell it for far too cheap.

For the last few months, I haven't been writing in this space as much. It was a decision I made back in February before I knew it in my head even if I already knew it in my heart. The incidental finding on a CT scan wasn't just a spot on my kidney. It was a mass. It was malignant. And I'm grateful, not regretful.

The remedy is straightforward. I start pre-op tomorrow and the surgery is on Friday. It won't be fun, but I'll find some fun in it anyway. The survival rate for radical nephrectomy is especially good. In terms of cancer, they say, it's the absolute best one to get. It's almost like hitting a jackpot. What does that mean?

There won't be any chemotherapy or radiation. The whole of it rides on one operation, and then a lifelong commitment to a different (but not debilitating) lifestyle with semi-regular followups, blood work, and scans to make sure there isn't any more of it lurking around somewhere. So seize the day.

The past 90 days have been fun. Thanks for sticking around. 

I really give a lot of credit to people like Leslie Lehrman and her daughter Jennifer Windrum. They saw cancer as a catalyst for something bigger. It takes real courage to do something like that. And I've met a lot of people who see it as a calling of sorts. We need more people like them. Cancer needs a cure.

I took a different path, more along the lines of Hazel Grace Lancaster in The Fault In Our Stars after her transformation. I lived a little more, only alluding to or mentioning surgery as necessary. It was the only way I could work, live, and play without it overtaking my life. I even pushed the surgery out enough so my family could keep our vacation, my students could keep their instructor, and clients and service commitments might have a few more hours of time. My wife hated the idea, but it's who I am.

I quit smoking (before the prognosis, ironically), worked out more, finished some home improvement projects, baked some desserts, made new friends, reached out to old ones, discovered some inspired talents, worked with amazing people across several dozen companies and nonprofits, pressed forward with plans to start a new agency with three other partners, promoted other people's causes and efforts, funded some ideas via Kickstarter, supported education by donating to schools, re-discovered some latent artistic talent, made a sketch at The Getty, stood by as my son received another star for his black belt, saw my daughter baptized because she wanted to be, and wrote fiction for the first time in years. As the log ride caption read on Instagram: This is life, baby.

Sure, there were a few disappointments too. My doctors wouldn't clear me for the Spartan Race so close to surgery. One promising prospect green lighted and then retracted a proposal because someone sold them snake oil, wasting several days of precious time. And occasionally, despite my best intent, the gravity of the circumstances sometimes made me too impatient for those closest to me. I'm sorry.

The next 90 days will be even better. Expect to see changes sometime soon. 

If those last 90 days had taught me anything, it was how working on the wrong accounts truly dragged me down last year. I wasn't always happy with some of the work, even if I was good at it nonetheless.

I had learned the lesson before, but obviously needed to learn it again. There won't be a next time. Beginning with my recovery, expect to see some changes in this space. Time is just to too short to be stuck in one niche for too long.

I really wish I could tell you some specifics, but none of the paragraphs felt right so I took them all  down. Let's save it all for a post-surgery conversation. And if we never have the chance to have one? Then the best way to think about everything is to reflect on a comment I wrote for a friend of mine.

When bad things happen, there is very little you can do except find solace in the storm. And in finding it, hold those close to you a little tighter, even if it is just for a little while. The importance of such things are not measured in minutes but by magnitude. Good night and good luck. It has been my pleasure.

Avoiding Stereotypes: The Color Of Ideology

No one really knows what Martin Luther King, Jr. would have thought had he lived to see the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom (Aug. 28, 1963). On one hand, Americans had not only elected but re-elected the first African-American President. On the other, it has created one of the most divisive socio-economic-political climates since President Abraham Lincoln.

I, for one, would like to think he would stand by the lines delivered in the I Have A Dream speech, holding firm to his conviction that people not be judged except by the content of their character. For although racism has largely been abolished in the hearts and minds of a majority, the propensity of humankind to divide has reached a crescendo on dozens of other fronts, ranging from the values people hold to the rights they are willing to defend as part of the definition of freedom.

Whereas in the era of Martin Luther King, Jr., people were unjustly and commonly segregated by the color of their skin, hate speech and stereotypes have found a new home that often ignores the color of our skin and ravishes us instead for religious views, political leanings, and urban-rural localities. While few people would defend hate speech aimed at racial heritage and cultural identity, it has somehow become accepted to characterize some religions as deserving censor, some political parties as callous, gun owners as redneck bigots, and even whether they take notes on a notepad or laptop. And today, rather than enacting segregation in schools, most of it takes place in news outlets and social networks.

So let's be clear. Stereotypes are ignorant, regardless of righteousness. 

A stereotype is a thought about a specific group of individuals that is used to forward the belief that a single commonality about that group can accurately define all characteristics about that group, usually intended to cause others to emotionally react to the naming of the group with good or bad prejudice.

In the past, it was most commonly associated with heritage. Today, it's most commonly associated with ideology and identity. But what hasn't changed is: they are almost always wrong, especially when they are used to dehumanize people; they are exceptionally damaging, especially if we accept derogatory stereotypes that other people assign us; and they are hardwired into our brains, which means we have to be ever vigilant in dismantling almost all of them.

Some people are surprised anytime it is suggested that we are hardwired to invent stereotypes; the truth to it is scientific. Our brains invent stereotypes in order to make our world less cognitively demanding. It's all tied to cognitive psychology, which was always my favorite sub-discipline of psychology (and one of the most useful for communicators and marketers).

Cognitive psychology delves into how people perceive, remember, think, speak, and solve problems. And one of the mental processes is how we categorize and compartmentalize information. For example, when we learn fire is hot, we categorize it as something that can burn us. Later, when we learn an oven or stovetop can be hot, we might put it into the same category. We need it to survive.

But then something happens sometime between junior high school and high school. Our cognitive processes begin to take on more abstract forms as we begin to define our world based on arduous notions not much better than The Breakfast Club, a film about five high school stereotypes — jock, geek, stoner, outcast, and socialite — who find temporary common ground around being detainees.

Unfortunately, few people ever really evolve from these baseless social roles. They simply trade them in for new ones, making the world easier to understand even if this understanding is flawed. Worse, we sometimes compound the problem by pursuing the characteristics of stereotypes that we want to belong too, making them seem all the more valid, and creating campaigns to prove they are true and desirable.

The evolution of cognitive thinking relies on individual character. 

There is one simple reason that I tend to attract diversity among friends and associates. Much like their heritage, their ideologies mean less to me than how they behave and treat others, especially those they seem ideologically opposed to across any number of socio-economic-political issues.

And for that, I grant them equal tolerance even as we disagree, especially if we can maintain a relationship without having to dress up in a costume and, most assuredly, if we can agree not to censor or subjugate other people's rights, property, and values. It's called respect. It's called refusing to drink from the cup of bitterness and hatred. It's called character, built on trust and understanding that all men and women are created equal without being forced to carry the loadstones of ancestry and stereotype.

That's my dream. And while I could be wrong, I would like to think it was Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream too — that the flaws of one character within a thinly connected group ought not be used as a weapon to vilify each and every perceived associate. This is, after all, America, a place where we are supposed to be uniquely accountable to our own behaviors and actions and deserve to be judged according to our character and not the behaviors or actions that people attempt to assign us.

That said, it is my dream that people think twice before embracing hate speech and stereotypes, carelessly sharing and spreading such messages across their social connections without any thought of the disparagement they might cause others because underneath it all, no matter how we divide people, we really are all brothers and sisters of the human race. And so, in observance of Martin Luther King Jr. day, good night and good luck.

Making Milkshakes: Personal And Public Relations

There was plenty of enthusiasm at my daughter's kindergarten class on Wednesday. They graduated.

What makes a kindergarten graduation special is that it's considered their first major step toward education. When they return after the summer, all of them will be in grade school. Their next major transition, of course, will be the fifth grade when they leave grade school and head off to middle or junior high school.

As my daughter was one of the beaming students in this graduating class, there were many memorable moments for me as a proud parent. But those personal moments aren't the ones I want to share today. Something else stuck, and it applies to communication, social media, and relationships.

How making a milkshake can be an effective communication and relationship technique. 

When the principal of the school trotted out with a blender, milk, ice cream and other ingredients, most parents weren't too sure what to think of it. The kids knew what to think. They wanted some.

Except, the lesson she had to share with them wasn't how wonderful milkshakes can be (or maybe it was). The milkshake making is how she captured their attention. She described to them how she never considered herself a good cook, but she was always good at making ice cream.

The ice cream she had was indeed homemade. It was vanilla, made with nothing more than cream, sugar, ice, and a dash of vanilla extract for good measure. She spooned out two generous scoops as she talked, adding them to the milk in her blender.

As she did, you could see every student — from kindergarten to fifth grade — begin to lick their lips in anticipation. They knew it was going to be good. And the room erupted in applause when she asked for volunteers to taste it. Except, before any of the students were picked from the crowd, she stopped.

The milkshake, she said, was pure. But what would happen, she asked, if she added one ingredient that wasn't so pure? Not a lot, she said, holding up a silver bowl with the mystery addition. Just one piece.

The sheer horror on their faces will never be forgotten as the principal dangled a single piece of raw liver over the unspoiled milkshake. Several students even cried out in anguish as she let it fall in with a plunk. Amidst the growing angst and protest, she gave the blender another spin, giving the creamy white ice cream a grayish-pink tint.

Half of the would-be volunteers who wanted to sample the milkshake weren't so interested any more. And just to be sure there were no brave takers, she then dumped half of the contents from the bowl into the blender. With a final whirl, the once white milkshake turned maroon-gray and lumpy with little unground bits of the contaminant floating freely to every corner of the drink.

All relationships start off on a note of natural purity until we alter them. 

Think for a moment about every relationship you might have ever had or will have in your life — acquaintance or friend, classmate or coworker, colleague or partner, reporter or public relations practitioner, employee or employer, contractor or customer, lover or spouse, online connection or offline passerby. It's doesn't matter which ones you think of first. In this story, all of them start out equal. All of them are just like that milkshake.

They start out pure, natural, and delicious. They can remain that way for a long time — filled with nothing but enthusiasm for the next job, next date, next gathering, next opportunity to share, serve, sell, and celebrate. But how long that lasts is up to each pairing.

Relationships are fragile things, like snowmen in spring, I once wrote as part of the prose in a company Christmas card. But even so, I don't think I realized how fragile they were until watching the principal destroy a milkshake at my daughter's school.

It only takes one piece of liver — one white lie, one unreasonable expectation or demand, one broken promise, one unfollow or meaningless connection, one malicious manipulation, one infidelity, one single dose of spam, or one time you need need to be right at all costs — to give it that uncharacteristically grayish-pink tint. And even while most of relationships are anything but pure white over time (because of one party or the other; one mistake or another), one might wonder just how murky someone can make a milkshake before it becomes undrinkable. Most of the time, it seems, people color them up pretty good because we're all human.

Still, the truth is that we don't have to carry around muddied, chunky milkshakes. Since every relationship starts out with the same set of pure ingredients, someone has to be the first to toss in a little piece of liver (or maybe the whole bowl). And while there are plenty of people in the world who are really good at doing it first that doesn't mean we have to beat them to the bullshit finish.

If you want to really change the way you think, work, and live, take a moment to assess all the milkshakes that you have in your life. Are they all white? And if they are not white, how much of the liver did you intentionally or unintentionally dump into them?

Chances are that some of them need to be poured out (those destructive forces in your life), some of them need to be drunk up so you can start over (the ones you messed up all on your own), and a tiny few of them need to be preserved (those lucky few or any that have started new). And then, assuming you are lucky enough to minimize the sludge after the cleanup, maybe you can carry the wisdom in the lesson for the rest of your life — you don't have to ruin your milkshakes. And you don't have to keep the ones that someone else ruins either.

Standing Up: Communication Stops Bullies And Abusers

The knock at the door was fierce, followed by an aggressive sequence of door bell rings. It's not unexpected when you have a preteen in the house, even if most of his friends show more respect.

It wasn't a friend.

I may have never known it, but my son came bounding up the stairs a moment later.

"Can I go outside?" he said. "Some kid wants to fight me."

"Um, no you may not," I said, still in disbelief over what I heard.

"What should I tell them?"

"I don't know," I said. "Tell them to piss off before they piss me off."

So that is what he did, but not exactly. He told the kid to come over tomorrow at high noon, a nearly subconscious nod to the diminishing reruns of westerns that some of us grew up with three decades ago. I was amused, but still not pleased.

As three kids loitered in front of the house, the primary antagonist still stung by my son's matter-of-fact response and the promise of a new fight time the next day, I asked my son what it was all about.

Turns out, the principal aggressor, who had a head or two of height on my son but no martial arts sparring medals to speak of, was nothing more than a bully. My son explained it all on the quick.

The bully had been harassing a girl at school, a friend of my son's. A few weeks ago, she would have considered herself an online friend of the bully. But his social network conversations with her had recently turned from banter to advances. She wasn't interested. He couldn't take no for an answer.

Apparently, it wasn't enough to keep the rejection to himself. Every time the bully would pass her in the school hallway, he call her a bitch. Every time he gathered with a few friends at lunch, he would whine away about how she was no good. And every time he had a chance, with a glance or sometimes more physical stance, he would squeeze in on her space and make her feel uncomfortable, vulnerable, and afraid.

My son put a stop to it. He called him out. And while he wasn't looking for a fight, he was looking to stop the harassment.

"I think you should leave her alone," he had said. And the bully left her alone, almost immediately.

But like many troubled and tormented youths today, stories tend to spread. Eyewitness accounts are sometimes embellished. And the bully knew that if he let the shutdown stand, his reputation for toughness, despite being propped up by nothing more than fragile fakery, would be at an end.

"There isn't going to be fight tomorrow," I told my son. "There isn't going to be a fight at all."

Since the bully and his friends were still loitering in front of our driveway, I took the opportunity to have a chat with them. I did because I already knew something about bullies that the bullies never count on.

Most of them are cowards, crushed out easily any time you hold a mirror to their faces, exposing them for what they really are under their puffed chests and furrowed brows. I had something to tell him.

Only fearless communication can crush a bully and end abuse.

Bullies, child molesters, and domestic abusers have one thing in common. They hate open and honest communication. It makes them powerless, especially because they draw their strength from secrets.

They, people allegedly like Arthur "Jerry" Sandusky from the Penn State scandal, count on any victims and occasional witnesses to cover up the destruction in a shroud of silence, leaving their misdeeds to be shared with the unfortunate few who empower them out of fear, ignorance, or lack of character.

I'm not the only one who knows it too. Half a world away in Australia, Kristin Brumm is organizing a global online event to bring awareness to domestic violence. It's called Speak Out, named after her decision to come forward and put an end to her own abusive relationship. She was lucky.

She didn't have a champion like my son. She didn't even have a witness like the one that Mike McQueary could have been. She only had herself; and frankly, she is remarkably fortunate to have found such courage even if she was unfortunate enough to find it too late and at a price too high.

Today, Brumm struggles each day to make up for her silence. She does it in a way that requires an equal measure of courage. She is helping others by asking bloggers to speak out about abuse on November 18. I'm ahead of the curve, only because I would like you to consider speaking out too.

They way I see it, the whole lot of them fall in together: teenage bullies, child molesters, and domestic abusers. All of them prey on people, trying to make themselves feel big by trying to make others feel helpless. But the truth is that none of them, whether they use physical or psychological abuse, has any more power than they are afforded. Take away their secrets and they crumble when someone calls them out.

What I told the neighborhood bully, suspending his reign. 

I didn't have to say much when I went outside, commanding him and his friends to stay off my property. I told them that there wasn't going to be a fight, not because my son wasn't ready but because I wasn't going to allow it. (Given my son possesses a second degree black belt, it would have hardly been fair.)

"My son isn't afraid to fight you, but I won't allow it," I said. "But you need to know that he would whip the shit out of you if I did allow it. So you might want to move along before I change my mind."

The kid shrugged, so I pressed.

"There isn't going to be a fight today, or tomorrow. And I'll call the cops the next time I see you here," I said, as they finally turned and started to walk away. "Am I clear? Because I can't hear you."

The kid paused for a second before burping out a timid and barely audible "Yes, sir."

But then something else happened. Much like the apparent pain caused by the initial shutdown a few days before, he recoiled as he faced is own embarrassment.

"Tell your son to mind his own business next time," he spat.

"What? No, I will not," I said. "He did the right thing. So maybe what you need to do is go home, wipe your nose, and learn how to be a man, without bullying girls. Yeah, he told me what you did. You're a punk. And I'm glad he stopped you."

He shoulders sank as he sulked away. But even more telling was how his friends reacted. When I had wandered outside, they looked to be as tight as thieves. As they turned the corner, they were frayed. His friends were obviously unaware that they had turned out to support someone who bullies girls.

The bully, I'm told, gives both the girl and my son a fairly wide berth at school. We can only hope the lessons go further than protecting the pair of them. I think it will, as long as people shut bullying down.

And therein lies the lesson. As one of my friends said when I mentioned it on Facebook a few days ago: Teaching our kids to be bully proof isn't enough. We have to teach them to stand up to it. He's right. All too often, bullies will grow up to be tomorrow's domestic abusers or child predators.

There is only one remedy. Speak out. Stand up. And shut them down. Do it today.

Fighting For Preemies: Bloggers Unite

"A bear and a hare have been to the fair. But not the hippopotamus." — Sandra Boynton, But Not the Hippopotamus

Every morning, well before sunrise, I would place Boynton's book next to my cell phone so I wouldn't forget it. It didn't really matter if some of the other Boynton books we kept might have read more upbeat. The story seemed to fit.

As other babies were being born to wide-eyed parents and heading home to be bundled in blankets, doted over by grandparents, and set free to start their adventures, our daughter had taken a detour. Every day was a fight for life inside the Summerlin NICU.

No one really knows why there weren't any warning signs on the first morning. My wife had simply noted that our daughter's kicking, which had started earlier than expected, had suddenly tapered off. Initially, the sudden change was almost dismissed, given that we hadn't even entered a kick counting stage of pregnancy. Instinct over intellect proved to be wiser.

It only took a few hours in the hospital to discover the truth. Our daughter was dying, and even the specialist who had been called in seemed uncertain as to why while listening to the amplified throb of her heartbeat, steady and strong, except every ten minutes or so when it would slow and drift quietly under the hastened pace of the hospital.

"When that happens, make a noise or do something to excite her. We can't let her drift off before your doctor arrives."

The task seemed easy enough, especially after surrendering to the gravity of the situation. Telling my son, after noticing the entire day had drifted away to indecision, when I picked him up from summer camp to take him to his grandparents so I could make it back, was more difficult. The excitement of having a sister in three months was all he could talk about.

"Well, I need to tell you something," I said during the car ride. "Your mom might have the baby today and there is a problem..."

She might not come home from the hospital for awhile. She might not come home at all. "She will," he said with certainty.

She wouldn't come home for three long months. As I was running up to the doors of the hospital, my cell phone buzzed with the news. Our doctor had arrived and they were prepping my wife for an emergency Caesarean. There was barely enough time to scrub.

Our daughter was born 2 pounds, 13 inches, at just under 28 weeks. Just a few days earlier, the survival rate would have been reduced to a coin toss. The odds are a bit better today, but there are no promises. If there were, they wouldn't change the location of the incubators to prevent visiting parents from becoming attached to neighboring early newborns. Too much can go wrong. Too much does go wrong.

For parents, having premature babies is best described as being like a Ferris wheel. Some days you leave the NICU with the anticipation they will be released in a matter of a few days. That can all change in a day. Or in an hour. Or in seconds, sometimes while you're sitting bedside (incubator-side) reading a story so they can become familiar with the sound of your voice. And you learn to step aside for the nurses.

And you learn to have patience in adversity, when real courage might mean standing firm as opposed to flying off to parts unknown. And you learn that every treatment carries a potentially permanent consequence. And you learn that tolerance for transparency carries a certain quota because people do not generally want to know the truth. They mostly want to know that everything will be all right so they can marvel at the resolve or maybe faith.

Over the course of the next three months, our daughter almost died or almost had permanent damage while undergoing 28 medication administrations; on and off respiratory support, ranging from ventilators and high air flow nasal cannulas; and 48 different medical procedures, ranging from phototherapy and blood transfusions to upper GIs and a lumbar puncture. She overcame two organism infections and five staph infections, with the worst of it being an infection that had adhered to her ankles and required surgery.

At the end of Boynton's book, the hippopotamus eventually is asked to join the other animals in their fun activities and adventures. Even after being discharged, there would be prolonged procedures, medications, and side effects. And even when the worst seems to be over, it's never really over. And yet, we're blessed.

"A bear and a hare have been to the fair. But not the hippopotamus." — Sandra Boynton, But Not the Hippopotamus

At the end of the detour — made amidst a gubernatorial primary, business expansion, and non-profit obligations — you come to realize the experiences we have are not a byproduct of the environment in which you reside or merely timing of events or even the perception of other people. Good or bad, experiences are what you make of them, wherever you are or whatever you're doing.

Of course, we can influence all those other things to some degree. And that is what I might ask you to consider today.

While the why behind the cause of our daughter's premature birth will never be solved because we did everything right, many preterm births can be prevented with prenatal care. It's important because every step you take can help reduce preterm birth, which accounts for more than one million of 13 million stories that don't end like our daughter's story or the analogy I made with Boynton's book.

Education will provide a means to solve part of the growing challenge. The rest comes from generosity and vision, as the numbers above only reflect a success rate of infants born preterm including 36 weeks. For babies like my daughter and those under 26 weeks, the success rate relies almost exclusively on medial research funded by people like us and you through the March of Dimes.

For those who already have helped, thank you. We're grateful, because it made a difference.