These are a Few of My Favorite Things – Exercise #11

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In honor of all my British friends, today’s exercise calls for me to list “Fifteen of Your Favourite Things”. Well one of my favorite things is alternating between British and American spellings so that it freaks out the spell-check and makes me seem mentally unstable. Yes, I am going to blame the instability on the spelling. Might as well. And since I am going to do that, it only makes sense to start my list of favorite things with …

Just British - Keep Calm and Drive On1) British cars. I have been a devotee of British cars since I was a teenager. My first car was an MG. There has barely been a year since then when I didn’t own at least one British car, and often many more. The cars do not have to be convertibles, but they are usually old. And in various states of disrepair. I love the way they drive, the way the smell, and the way they feel. I do believe Castrol runs in my blood.

2) British television. Since we are already in the Enchanted Isle for the cars, we might as well stay for the telly. I don’t know why other than the shows are better! I started out early watching Monty Python and Doctor Who (Tom Baker was my Doctor), and I am still watching them. Oh, and Top Gear. And lets not forget Sherlock.

3) Trains and Trolleys. Again, one of those loves I have had since I was a kid. Things on rails. Big and small. Real and model. If you are really board you can check some out at Michael’s Trains.

4) Soccer. I never have been a fan of baseball, basketball, hockey, American football, or any other sport. I like soccer. And by the way, Man U rules!

5) Apple products. “Finally!” you are saying. “Something closer to home,” you are saying. And you would be right. I prefer the Mac operating system. Just cleaner and more stable. I make my living, or a good portion of it, supporting Windows. That tells you something. It needs a lot of support.

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You're A Professional, Act Like One!

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This is a rant. I will admit it right off. I have been hitting a lot of new folks in various writing and social media communities recently and they are driving me nuts. I go to an author’s site or maybe their twitter profile or a fellow Gravatar Profileblogger, what they are saying interests me, and then I try to find out more about them. Dead end. These folks, as well meaning as they may be, are trying to present themselves as professionals without taking the basic time to create a professional online presence. I am not talking about stuff that costs a lot of money, but stuff that has a big impact on how easy it is to find you and how you are perceived when people do find you.  In marketing speak part of this is branding. In business speak a lot of this should be common sense.

Branding and consistency are what help your customers, readers, users, fans or even friends find you on the web, find what you are doing and what pertains to you, and also know that the you they find really is you! Think of it as not trying to convince people what an honest reputable person you are while selling watches out of the back of a borrowed car in a vacant parking lot. Also think of it as not handing out business cards that are missing your phone number, address or email.

So, with very little money, how can you clean up your act? Well, here are ten cheap and easy steps.

1) Make sure you have your own website. Yours. Not part of Facebook or LinkedIn or Google+ site (though you do want those). WordPress.com is ok for now, but only because they let you export everything in the future. This site will be your home base. You want somewhere that you control and that the Lords Of Facebook can’t change the look and feel, and advertising, of without your input. (Cost: $0 to $10 a month – or somewhere in between. Your choice!) [Recommendation – WordPress.com if you want to go free, DreamHost if you want a bit more control and are willing to pay a small amount for it.]

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My Worst Habits – Exercise #9

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Seriously? My worst habits? That is what this exercise wants me to discuss next? But I don’t have any bad habits – I am Agitated Habitsperfect! And modest too. But you know, asking someone to list their worst habits is like those job interview questions where they ask you what the worst thing about your job performance would be … “oh, the worst thing is that I want everything to be right. I just care too much!”  Sure, right. That means you are a pain in the butt.

But, enough of them, back to me. Luckily this says my worst “habits” not “traits” so I don’t have to go into my insecurities or anything. Probably my worst habit is procrastination. I am one of those people who claims that “I do my best work under pressure.” Well that is because most of my work is done under pressure because I wait till the last minute to do it. I have done that since I was a kid in school researching and writing papers. Honestly I waited until the last minute before even trying to read whatever book we were writing on. The bad thing about that is that I am a very slow reader. I have always read like the English major I am. I labor over each word and sentence; analyzing the construction of the smallest details in both the mechanics and the meaning. Let me tell you, when you are reading Dickens that can take a very long time!

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My Man Purse – Exercise Number 8

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So we can tell this series of exercises was composed by a woman because question number 8 is “What’s in yourMen's Leather Messenger Bag handbag?” The list does say “handbag” not “purse”, but the first definition that pops up when you Google handbag is “a woman’s purse.” Hoping to come up with something different I then went searching a few other definitions. They all in one way or another indicated that the item in question would belong to a woman. Well sorry, I am not a woman and I don’t own a purse. I do, however, have a very nice leather man-bag that my wife got me a few years back.

The bag in question is far larger than most women’s purses, but not as heavy and bulky as a briefcase. One of the reasons I like it, and the canvas paratrooper’s bagir?t=palmettobugdigit&l=as2&o=1&a=B002E0MO58 I used to carry for years before, is that it is soft sided. That means that it can swell and take shape to contain all the various junk I stuff in it. Additionally, and I have tested this on a few occasions, it is soft enough to use as a pillow in airports or other locations where I might get stuck. It is great for propping my head on to read as I wait out delays in waiting rooms and sterile concourses.

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