A client provided an interview to a local newspaper a few days ago. This reporter in question happens to be a summer intern for this particular publication, so lack of experience, as much as the industry itself contributed to the problem. Yesterday afternoon, my client called me with a bit of news that the published story reflected year-old data and pulled quotes out of context from a news story six months previous. Unfortunately, this story got picked up by the Associated Press and spread rapidly around the web and even made it into statewide circulation via local news radio.

For this particular client, data validity is the key to his success. So by reporting the wrong numbers, this reporter dealt a blow to my client’s reputation. I spent the afternoon contacting news organizations that had posted the AP story, trying to get the correct information into the stream. What proved most frustrating was a call to the editor of the paper who published the original story.

He initially claimed that if those facts appeared in the story, then my client must of said them. He backed off from his claim once we made it clear that we could provide the original sources and show that the reporter had knowingly (whether through laziness or incompentence) used old data.

The most frustrating aspect was how difficult it was to get my facts into the stream. While some sites offered the option to comment on the story, others required a long search through contact information. Some even required that I register before I could submit a query via email. It’s worth noting that not all of these sites with questionable contact functionality belonged to newspapers. Several perpetrators were TV stations.

So, what’s the catch-22 for newspapers? The option for feedback and providing clarification to a story is almost nonexistent. Yes, blogging isn’t perfect either, but there’s at least the potential for me to interact with the author in real time. Once a story has gone to press, that’s it, because how many of you actually read the “correction” posted in the next edition? They’re usually in a tiny box, somewhere deep inside the paper.

Going forward, I’m recommending to all my clients that they build relationships with organizations that welcome and incorporate feedback. I’m not talking about “fixing” a story, but rather remaining open to revising inaccurate information or adding additional facts to improve the quality of a story.

This one-way conversation is crap. Newspapers made money for a long time by talking at people. Only now are they starting to realize that people will opt out completely if they can’t participate. If they can’t figure out how to make the conversation two-way, without requiring significant hoop jumping, the switch to other resources will be final.

Through the dice toss that is Amazon.com’s “books you might like,” I discovered Born to Run by Chris McDougall. Besides the excellent writing, McDougall tells an amazing story about the Tarahumara, a tribe living in the wilds of Mexico’s Copper Canyon area. While the book weaves together several stories about ultra running and the Tarahumara, the underlying thesis is that humans are born to run, that our bodies can take pleasure from moving fast. Miles weren’t meant to be slogged through, but reveled in.

Prior to reading Born to Run, I’d read a few review that said, “I’ll be surprised if you don’t want to get up and run after reading this book.” Slightly skeptical, because I’ve believed forever that some people are “runners” and the rest of us aren’t. I started to read.

I finished the book this morning, and the reviews were right: I wanted to run to experience the same pleasure McDougall described. This book is a reminder that running needn’t be about namebrand apparel, corporate sponsorships, and fame. Running can be for the sheer pleasure of experiencing a finely built machine doing what it’s designed to do.

How many things in our lives fit this definition? How many things that we did for pleasure have turned into work? Think about how we eat.

We’ve gone from sitting down to a meal, perhaps with the accompanient of conversation, to eating fast food in our cars. We define this practice as “convenient,” but we’ve turned a pleasure into a task to check of the list.

Exercise of any sort is all too often slotted into categories of physicial appearance. We don’t play anymore, we cardio. We don’t laugh from breathlessness, we huff with boredom. What are we becoming?

What if, instead of advocating health care for everyone, we advocated healthy living for everyone? What if instead of passing a cap and trade program, we made it easier for people to do things in their community under their own steam?

While technology in its many shapes and sizes has helped make life amazing in many ways, I think we often overlook simple solutions in favor of the complicated. We need to examine the motivations that our driving our actions with more care. Too much of what we do happens on autopilot. Sometimes that’s all we can manage, but it shouldn’t become the driving force behind our lives.

As I try to change my perspective about running, and even the way I run, I still may wake up some mornings with little desire to step foot outside. However, I do know that running has become less about the mileage, the time, and the scale and more about how I feel while I’m doing it.

We’re mourning the guy who introduced the moon walk, Thriller, and wore the title, “King of Pop” with aplomb, not the guy who adopted plastic surgery as a religion, faced charges of child molestation, and dangled a baby over a balcony. We seem to do this with every celebrity.

We mourn the Farrah Fawcett in the red swimsuit, not the Farrah Fawcett who appeared incoherent on David Lettermen. We want our stars, our heroes, to stay strong, to stay happy, to stay admirable. Sadly, they’re all-too-humanness makes them vulnerable to the same ills that plague us all. So when they fall, we push them aside until we’re given the opportunity to place them on the pedestal that death provides.

Even more intriguing, why does it take death for us to celebrate what we perceive as amazing in a person? As of this morning, 12 Jackson songs were sitting in Amazon’s top 25 MP3 downloads. For several songs, it’s the first day they’ve been in the top 100, let alone top 25. Why did we wait until now to celebrate the talent?

Our relationship with celebrity has always been complex. If we’re honest, we can acknowledge that our very fickleness can and has been the undoing of more than one star. As Oscar Wilde put it, “The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius.”

At some point, the deaths of celebrities drop out of the news cycle, and we forget until the next time we’re informed someone from the past is no more. Perhaps stars would prefer more understanding from us now versus our adulation when they’re aren’t around to appreciate it.

In my case, I think that’s why I’m hesitant to meet new people. While I’ve met many wonderful people, I’ve met as many, if not more, who’ve failed to meet my expectations. How we chose to handle the results of our expectations says something about who we are, too. If I swore to never meet anyone new again, I’ve allowed my dashed hopes to carry too much weight. If I entered every situation with the goal of having a perfect experience, it’s a level few if any can achieve.

At this point, I turn to pragmatism, one of the unsexiest ways to view the world. While I hope the people I meet will also meet my expectations, I’m also pragmatic enough to recognize that not everyone will. Maybe this statement is too obvious, but I think it’s one we still overlook.

In politics, for instance, I wish there was a Pragmatic party, one that didn’t identify as liberal or conservative. The goal of this party’s members is to reach the best decision given the current information and situation on hand. Take the current debate over health insurance. We know millions of people don’t have insurance. One side argues that a single payer system is the only solution. The other side argues that the market takes care of itself. Both sides can make the case that their opponent’s solution has weaknesses. Thus, the need for pragmatism.

Adopting extreme positions for the sake of being extreme accomplishes nothing of value. Did the three men who shot down a doctor, a security guard, and a military recruit accomplish anything other than the fulfillment of their sick objectives?

We’re watching firsthand how people respond to extremes in Iran. Imagine what Iran would look like if a run-off election was the original result of last week’s election. I doubt that protests would have reached current levels because it was a more realistic expectation that they’re would be a run-off between the current president and another candidate versus a blow out.

Managing expectations is an underrated skill that will only increase in value as we try to manuever through a life filled with ever more expectations. Whether it’s people or the latest gizmo, we’re fools if we fail to understand the role and power of expectations, for better or for worse.

• No support teams: Despite the rule, one such car was labeled clearly as a support vehicle with large letters on three windows. The car continued to follow along with racers even when it became clear the  car was interfering with racers.
• No bikes on the course: Speaking from firsthand experience, there’s a reason why this rule exists. Slowing down to go through a water station, I didn’t realize that a bike was behind me. A shout to look out was my only warning, and I didn’t realize the warning applied to me (no eyes in the back of my head). Luckily, only the handlebars clipped my side.

I’m not a natural rule follower for the sake of appearances. Rules need to make sense. However, few things frustrate me more than people who believe the rules apply to everyone but them.

What happens if everyone takes the same approach? What if we use the little things as a way to segue to bigger rule breaking? Consider what happened to the economy during the last few months. How many of those negative events can be traced to people breaking the rules?

It’s Not About the Rules

Silly rules abound. Senseless rules confine. Rules are not automatically good or always needed. Rules aimed at the individual in an individual setting can often be questioned or challenged with little risk to others. For instance, if you live in a state with a seat belt law, you may challenge that rule by not wearing your seat belt. Not following this rule puts only you at  risk.

When rules are related to groups, there’s a problem. While you may choose to not wear your seat belt, if you choose to run a stop sign, you’re risking another’s well being.

The rules of my race, and their necessity, can be debated. However, when we engage in optional activities, I think we’re giving up our right to ignore the rules at will. What if every racer, all 300+ in this instance, had a support car? That’s 300+ cars on the race course. We couldn’t run the race because cars would fill the entire route.

Most of the time, the rules apply to you. You are not the exception. Why is this concept so difficult for people to grasp, to accept?

The use of company-issued mobile phones could trigger new federal income taxes on millions of Americans as a “fringe benefit.”

The Internal Revenue Service proposed employers assign 25% of an employee’s annual phone expenses as a taxable benefit. Under that scenario, a worker in the 28% tax bracket, whose wireless device costs the company $1,500 a year, could see $105 in additional federal income tax.

The IRS, in a notice issued this week, said employees could avoid tax liability if they showed proof they used personal cellphones for nonbusiness calls during work hours.

Despite my disgust over the potential imposition of a new tax liability, I had to laugh. It’s the line, “if [employees] showed proof they used personal cellphones for nonbusiness calls during work hours.”

We all know of coworkers who spend hours on the phone dealing with “personal” business. How do you think a company will respond to a employee that shows proof of these hours spent on non-work related calls?

So, the employee has  two choice: 1) pay the tax liability to avoid questions about time; or, 2) present the employer with a detailed list of time spent at work on personal issues. I think the tax man wins this round.

While knowing I’m not the only one to engage in this secret delight, I also feel a trifle sheepish for wasting time thinking about things that are 99.9% impossible or unknowable. On the other hand, I take such pleasure from these daytime dreams. I can’t resist the lure, even if only for a minute or two. Sounds like an addiction.

One  friend, describing his fascination, nay his addiction, to social media (e.g., Twitter, blogs, etc.), wonders how someone with an alcohol or drug addiction can function on a daily basis. He’s struggling with controlling his appetite for bytes while meeting his regular responsibilities. So much so, he’s going cold turkey for a few weeks in the hopes of spending his time more productively.

I still don’t know if my daydreaming falls in the addiction category. Even if it did, I’m not sure how one stops daydreaming. I try to rationalize the daydreaming, playing “what if,” by telling myself that if that particular moment or chain of events occurs, I’ll be prepared.

Some times, my daydreams are outlets for the things I’ve read or the conversations I’ve remembered. Like a scene from a movie, I’ll try to work out the dialogue, the positioning of the cast. Then, I’ll roll forward or backwards in time,  looking for the perfect moment to start the action.

So why all the nattering about daydreams? I think, despite my difficulty in avoiding the temptation, we’re forgetting how to do it and the valuable role it can play in our lives. We’ve become obsessed with things on screens. Whether it’s the internet, video games, movies, etc., we’re choosing to let the images in our minds fall to wayside. In our search for “new,” we’ve focused on the outward instead of the inward. When was the last time you had a really good conversation with yourself?

Sounds crazy, but do you really know what you think, what you believe, and can you verbalize it? In this brave new world described in 140 characters, we’re risking our ability to share a complete, perhaps complex, thought. For the people (potentially anyone 30 and  older) who remember a world before the internet, we’ve had some experience, but what about the people whose entire lives have been digital?

Maybe encouraging people to daydream, to converse with themselves, isn’t as sexy as the latest iPhone app or video game, but it’s a skill to value nonetheless. Because if we stop being able to dream when the lights are on will we’ll start missing our cue to act.

While millions of Americans struggle to find work as they face foreclosures and bankruptcy, others have found a silver lining in the economic meltdown. These happily jobless tend to be single and in their 20s and 30s. Some were laid off. Some quit voluntarily, lured by generous buyouts.

Buoyed by severance, savings, unemployment checks or their parents, the funemployed do not spend their days poring over job listings. They travel on the cheap for weeks. They head back to school or volunteer at the neighborhood soup kitchen. And at least till the bank account dries up, they’re content living for today.

A couple of thoughts:

• A comment made later in the article refers to people choosing to opt out of a (corporate) system that isn’t working for them. What happens when the services associated with those systems run out of funds because people have opted out, but still expect a provided service?
• I know from firsthand experience why it feels so good to do work that fulfills you versus just provides a paycheck. However, what happens when the money runs out? If you haven’t been engaged in meaningful or measurable activity (e.g., school, volunteering, etc. vs traveling on the cheap) between jobs, will it be harder to get any job let alone a dream job?
• If funds run out, and your only option is to move in with the parents, is that really fair to the parents? At what point, do we accept responsibility for our individual existences and expenses?

I’ve gone through the unemployment cycle before, back during the dot com blow out in 2001. It was horrible on many levels, but there was a certain amount of pleasure at feeling justified in not working.

I don’t begrudge people the chance to make up for all those hours of overtime and extra travel, but I do expect an honest discussion about when play time is done. In order to recover from economic catastrophe, people have to be willing to work. It may not be in the same ways or in the same industries, but work is required. Funemployment looks like a slippery slope for even the most dedicated of individuals. What say you?

Disclaimer: These conversations took place using generalities. I know not EVERYONE fits the descriptions I use. I’m more interested in whether the basic ideas have validity.

These discussions focused on the idea that there’s a difference between how Generation X looks at work and money versus younger generations. One friend, also a Gen Xer, commented that we’re the generation that likes to work hard and play hard, a change from the Baby Boomers who worked hard, but had a hard time parting with their money. The downside to the Gen Xer lifestyle is that we haven’t been big savers, so odds are high that we’ll be working past 65. Then there’s the generations that come after mine.

I believe that they view money and work differently than any of the previous generations. To be clear, I’m not an advocate of, “this is the way things have always been…” Instead, I wonder how much you can change society on the whole in single generations. In particular, I wonder about the people who subscribe to Tim Ferris’s four-hour work week or a similar outlook.

High Expectations

While making sense on the surface (Why put off retirement until later when you can enjoy life now?), I question how well such an outlook jibes with things like raising a family or taking care of aging relatives. There’s been some discussion that coming generations will have difficulty achieving a life of greater success than their parents. Does this potential reality come from changing social obligations (e.g., greater consumer debt, expensive health care) or does it come from not maintaining some of the basics that stood their parents in good stead?

For instance, I’m astonished at how many people younger than me have such high expectations (note: not goals) at ever younger ages. Such expectations include expensive cell phones, nice cars, top-tier jobs, and living arrangements comparable to the home where they were raised. Even the idea of how hard someone should work for the things they want in life has changed.

Talent Isn’t Enough

I know that the generations following mine are packed with talented and intelligent people. There’s much to admire about a worldview founded on possibility and the belief that change can happen in a lifetime. However, I also suspect that at least a few will fail to succeed because they don’t have the necessary work ethics to do so. Some times, there are jobs that have to be done, regardless of whether you like it or not. Some times you can’t have everything you want when you want it. And some times, there’s something to be said for delayed gratification. If you had everything you wanted at 20, what on earth is there to work for during the next 50 years? And I do use the term work on purpose.

There’s something to be said for the pleasure of performing a task and doing it well, regardless or in spite of expected financial gain. I take particular pleasure in being able to do things with my hands. Whether it’s planting flowers in my garden, sewing a quilt, hanging Christmas lights, or painting my house, there’s a huge sense of satisfaction at completing the task.

After Youth

I wonder about the ability of younger generations to complete the tasks facing them, to recognize work for its non-material benefits. Yes, they are technology prodigies and social mavens who can bang out messages on their cell phones in seconds, but do they have what it takes to survive once they are no longer young?

We live in country with huge debts. Social Security teeters on the brink of an abyss. I think back to the people who made up the Greatest Generation, the individuals who survived the Great Depression and World War II. I have a hard time seeing today’s youth confronting the same issues with the same success.

The world will change. It always does. For me, the ultimate question is whether coming generations are strong enough to see them through. Ayn Rand said that, “Every man builds his world in his own image.”  If they do so, will the world have a strong enough foundation to survive?

Image: L’Enfant Terrible <3. Some rights reserved.

• Bold Words is now self-hosted (bold-words.com). Most subscribers should continue to receive their feeds as before; however, if you subscribed when my URL was still a wordpress.com address, you’ll need to update your subscription. You can receive content via RSS or email.
• The design is still in flux, but I’ll retain a clean, easy-to-read design that makes it easier for site visitors to read and find content.
• I’m committing to three posts per week; Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.
• I’ll handle any topics related to work on my new business blog at brittraybould.com.

Why the changes?

I consider these changes a re-commitment on my part to writing on a regular basis. Setting up the second blog and business site was an acknowledgment that I need a separate place to address work-related topics. The content at brittraybould.com focuses on helping small business owners and marketers find solutions to their problems, a topic of interest to me, since that’s what a do, but not necessarily of interest to the bulk of the Bold Words audience.

What’s next?

I expect the Supreme Court nominations will provide plenty of material during the coming weeks and months. The economy, and how we’re choosing to address financial issues, occupy my thoughts, too. Plus, I’ll have to address at some point the way we talk and write about things like the swine flu. If nothing else, our changing relationship with language is worthy of thought. Teens conducting entire conversations by text versus calling on the phone or sharing ideas via the 140 characters of Twitter all fascinate me.

I hope to spark conversations and make this summer one to remember.