Easier Said Than Done

We all know the definition of insanity: "Doing the same thing in the same way and expecting a different outcome."  Les Brown always says, "If we knew better, we would do better!"  Well, I've no idea how to get my kid to Europe on a shoestring, so I have got to build a bridge from what I do know outward.  I've got to stand on what I know, and reach out toward the unknown.  It's scary.  Malachi is too afraid even to attempt it.  We've tried this before.  He remembers what happened.  I remember him dropping to his knees when he found out he would not be going on an educational retreat because I had not raised the money, and the scholarship application had closed.  Educational marketing is such that I was forced to do a fundraiser in order to be eligible for the scholarship.  The scholarship closed unexpectedly a day or so after I'd raised $300 to send them.  I had to tell Malachi.  I did not know it would break his heart.  Seven years later, his apathy tells me it's STILL broken.  He won't even try.

I've been tryna help myself and this kid a long time, and I'll never stop.

His non-involvement is hard on me.  I feel like I'm plugging away on his future without any input from him.  I vacillate between wanting to chuck the entire endeavor and stage-managing this whole thing without him.  He's got some awesome music on my hard drive.  I've been asking him for permission to shop it so he can pay his OWN daggone way!  He has slow-walked me since OCTOBER.  If he went to school one day and could not take a step for the throngs of people complementing him on his most recent beats, he would think I've done him wrong.  Even if it turned out for the best.  I know him.  This is what I mean by the convenience of stuck-ness.  That boy knows I respect him and his intellectual property so much that I won't administer it without his permission, even for his own good.  What he doesn't seem to comprehend is that I know what I'm doing.  No pedophile or perpetrator or poseur wants to take ME on. Not anymore, anyway.  I can destroy your credibility by means of a single hashtag, and I have done it.  No more posting black women bound with ball gags on my kid's profile for YOU, Dr. Cyanide.  I know the Godfather.

It's time to order a passport.  I'd have done it by now, but as you see, I'm panhandling this thing on my own.  Another few weeks and I won't be able to get it done in time.  I don't want to fail Malachi, even as he is busy failing himself.  He has insulated himself from reality.  If he doesn't do anything, there's no disappointment to be felt.  If I don't pull this off, he can tell himself it was never meant to be.  I've been listening here on The Plus.  I cannot allow my son to embrace this pattern of avoidance!  It will ruin his life.

I don't give up.  I don't back down.  I try to learn from Disappointment and Defeat.  One thing those two will never willingly teach you is how to WIN.  You have to FIGHT to wrest that knowledge from those two old instructors.  Their class is free, and you can enroll on a minute-to-minute basis.

Thanks for taking the time to read this blog.
#FriendsofMalachiMaxwellGlass

# hashfogged

There's more here than meets the eye.

I am trapped in an information bottleneck.  Caught between what I need to know, what I think I need to know, and what I have set out to accomplish (amid numerous other priorities), I am in real danger of becoming stuck on stupid.
   
Information overload, dead ahead.

Now, about these hashtags.

A hashtag is a means of assigning a smidge of information its own little place in the search engine universe.  A hashtag puts information in your electronic junk drawer. A thread is its container.  A bunch of other people's junk is in there too.  There's some hope of finding it later.  Really.  Your personally created hashtags contain a wealth of information about you and your habits.  If you create hashtags regularly, you are likely a profiler's dream.  Beware.  A search bot looks for hashtags in a much more systematic fashion than you or I.  It aggregates these bits into a Frankenstein Monster of living, breathing data.  On the internet, you are the sum total of your content.  If you lean more toward shoe shots and dizzy gifs, you can always adjust your content creation upward.

Ask yourself, "What is my data doing at any given moment?"  

LaShanda Henry, that question never gets old.

Data crawlers labor deep within the data mine, digging up marketing gold for the lucky few with a stake in the claim.  This aggregation of information will outlive each and every one of us.  What does that mean? Conversely, the internet lives and dies with the power grid.  No electricity, no internet.  What does that mean for those humans who do not live in the developed world?  In times of disaster?  For national security?

 As we chart our course on the frontier of the Fifth Dimension, let us be aware of the costs involved.

Currently, The Cloud is a Conundrum.  The Thing is Alive!

I took these pictures.  They are my intellectual property.  I am the self-proclaimed "Queen of Content."

Clouds are always there.  We take them for granted, until they collectivize themselves into a typhoon, super-size unto a hurricane, or twist and shout into a tornado.
Or unless there's a drought.  Then we do a rain dance.  Try to make it rain.  Pray for rain.

Fog is something else entirely.  Fog is often beautiful.  Beautiful and deadly. Fog itself obscures the way forward. Too much light on fog, and we are blinded.  Fog engenders pile-ups and carnage. Fog clouds judgement.  I am hashfogged.  I attend to the conversation in the Jungian jungle of John Kellden's intellectual

salon, and I am scared.  People well-versed in this stuff see a future you and I cannot see.  They are making their way through the hashfog, and I am mighty doggone glad that they have chosen to be a beacon lighting the way, rather than a wraith guarding the path.  (It seems that the word wraith has its origins in the Old Norse word for 'guardian,' according to Webster's New World Dictionary, 2nd College Ed.) There are many reasons to become cognizant of the implications engendered by our online lives.  You really cannot do that without a thorough grounding in SEO and social media psychology.  An entirely new group dynamic is arising out of the World Wide Web.  There are rules of etiquette, ranging from "ALL CAPS INDICATE SHOUTING," to "Be sure to uncheck 'Notify by email'!" There is a paradigm shift afoot, me hearties!  A new social order is evolving, and quickly.  Hashfog is obscuring the tip of a titanic data-berg.  Don't ignore the signals just because you're aboard a really big [Google] barge.

Thanks for taking the time to read my blog.

#FriendsofMalachiMaxwellGlass