Coming in under the wire, this is my contribution to Holly’s Mentor Roundtables post

Have you failed in life? No? Then you have nothing to teach me. It’s just that simple. In my life and my career, the biggest gains in my life have come from the result of a huge, drastic failure. Failure to finish college. Failure to manage my vices. Failure at my first stab at a career. All of these things were monumental failures. And you know what? I learned more from those than anything else. And that’s what I have to offer. My failure. My experience.

So what do you have to offer? What have you failed at? Because if you haven’t failed, you haven’t been tested. It’s easy to give mentoring advice when you don’t know what happens when the shit hits the fan. How’d you deal with it? What was the fallout? How did you grow?

Because that’s what I would want. Pain is learning.

So stop writing like you are.

We’ve all seen the posts. A list for this, a top-ten for that, a how-to about everything and anything. You’ll usually get some comments saying how great the advice is, or how it’s timely to that person’s situation at that given moment, or maybe it reminds them of something that happened in their life a while back.

And it’s all bullshit. So stop it.

I’m not here to say that you shouldn’t write about personal experience. Most bloggers do. Hell, it’s the most honest thing you can write about (assuming you’re telling the truth, but that’s another post for another day). But please, after you have shared, stop typing and hit publish. Leave out that last paragraph where you’re telling me how that translates into something I am supposed to do with my life. Because you know what? It doesn’t.

Here’s the thing: my life is not your life. There’s a distinct possibility that, while there may be similarities, we have way more differences about us. And that is a GOOD thing. It’s what makes the world worth living. After all, if we were all alike, we’d probably have killed off the human race out of sheer boredom.

But here is where it gets interesting. There are now bloggers out there making a name for themselves handing out advice that they have no fucking business giving. At all. Been freelancing for a month? Don’t tell me how to run a successful business. Been married for a year? The advice better stop at 365 days worth of experience. Think having a dog gives you the wisdom to tell me about my son? Go die in a fire instead.

People have the need to feel important. I get that. But stick to what you know. There’s a reason I don’t answer questions about things I don’t know. I know a little about a lot, a lot about a few things, and everything about nothing whatsoever. And that doesn’t make me less of a person. It makes me a bit more normal.

Put down the Kool-Aid. You’re embarrassing yourself.

Community is big right now, isn’t it. It seems everywhere you turn, there is a new ‘community’ popping up. I bet you’re in a few. Hell, you probably read this blog because you know me from one. I belong to a few. I’ve been a member of a few in the past that I no longer affiliate with, and I’m sure there are a few down the road that I’ll join.

There is nothing wrong with that. But here’s the thing about community. If you aren’t careful, you stop remembering why you are there, and just begin to listen to whatever the leader says. No more thinking, no more analysis. Just following. Blind.

There was a reason you joined in the first place. Maybe you liked the topic. Or perhaps the people involved. You read and enjoyed the content, shared it with your friends and followers on places like Twitter and Facebook. You added the RSS, were eager to press that retweet button when a new post came out. It was exciting. You were a part of something good.

Then something happened. There were a lot of new people that don’t share the views you thought the community held. What used to be a fresh perspective was becoming stale. Repetitive. Recycled. But the leader still had that ‘something’ you liked in the beginning. So you continue to read, comment, and share. You’re still participating. You’re invested. And just like a junkie wishing to get the feeling back from that first time, you keep on jamming that needle in, hoping that perhaps, this time it’ll be better.

It won’t.  

For all the talk about how Gen-Y is independent, self-willed, etc we sure as hell follow a lot. We do something because other people are doing it. You want to get on-board in the beginning. Be a thought leader amongst your online crew. Pride and ego are a sonofabitch, isn’t it?

It’s time to stop. Stop following. Quit ignoring the signs. Question your leaders. ALL of them. If it’s a shitty post, say so. If the leader is wrong, make sure you share that just as loud as you did with the good stuff. If they’re a fraud, SCREAM IT. Better to be a loud asshole who’s right than a quiet one.

Remember, some people may be following you the same way you are to others. If you don’t say something, you’re just as bad.

In digging through some old archives of my previous blog, I found this:

After the events of this week, I remember now why I was always hesitant about working for myself: stability. It started on Sunday, where the person I was rebuilding a massive website (800+ pages) for decided he “couldn’t afford it” and canceled the whole thing. All the time I spent (including 7 hours straight on Sunday…I was in the zone) went wasted. To say I was disappointed would be an understatement. Here’s a brief rundown of how it went:

Him: I can’t do the site anymore. People owe me money, I am still paying for someone to build the ecommerce store, blah blah blah. Also, your proposed setup (using a site structure) is too detailed. I’m not a “path” person.

Me: I understand. Money’s tight for everyone.

Him: I still need you to set up my Dreamweaver installation so I can edit the site myself

Me: I’ve done that already. The problem is your code has no standard structure to it. Your code needs to be set to point to the location of the image.

Him: I CAN SEE THE FILE ON MY MACHINE! WHY WON’T DREAMWEAVER WORK!!! (He’s now very upset)

Me: Because your server files are a mess. And you code looks like someone ate a website, partially digested it, then vomited the code back on to the page.

Him: I’M NOT A PATH PERSON!

Me: That may be, but servers and HTML code depend on them. I can make Dreamweaver upload the files to Burt Reynold’s personal website if I wanted to, but that won’t matter because you don’t know what the hell you’re doing. I can’t make Dreamweaver adjust to your inability to understand and use basic syntax.

And that was that.

“When we look at modern man, we have to face the fact that modern man suffers from a kind of poverty of the spirit, which stands in glaring contrast with a scientific and technological abundance. We’ve learned to fly the air as birds, we’ve learned to swim the seas as fish, yet we haven’t learned to walk the Earth as brothers and sisters.”

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

As of this posting, there are 11 days left in the year.

A bunch of stuff happened. Most of it awesome.

But not nearly as awesome as this

But here’s a thought to consider:

Just a few centuries ago, the smartest humans alive were dead wrong about damn near everything. They were wrong about gods. Wrong about astronomy. Wrong about disease. Wrong about heredity. Wrong about physics. Wrong about racism, sexism, nationalism, governance, and many other moral issues. Wrong about geology. Wrong about cosmology. Wrong about chemistry. Wrong about evolution. Wrong about nearly every subject imaginable.

The other night, I had a plan. A good plan. A productive plan. After my AA meeting, I was going to go downtown, fire up the laptop, finish a blog post I’ve been working on, tweak a few things on my laptop, set up some FTP access for a friend, and maybe catch some football on TV. But I did none of that. Instead, I had a cigar and enjoyed the football game with the other patrons. And in doing so, I came to a realization that had been gnawing at me for a while.

You need to turn ‘off’ the multi-tasking and networking from time to time.

Smoking cigars is something I do to relax and unwind. It’s somewhat of a carryover from the 15 years I smoked cigarettes (yes, I started smoking at age 10, and even worse I began again a few months ago.), some of it is tied to my father’s own cigar smoking, but mostly it’s a reason to sit down and decompress. Given that it takes a good 45 minutes to an hour to smoke a cigar, it’s almost as though I am mandating relaxation to myself.

So why do I want to include other work in it? I don’t, and I shouldn’t. While it’s OK to do something else from time to time, there’s a reason I need to relax in the first place. If I begin to incorporate other tasks into it, the meaning and purpose is gone.

There is always the push to always be ‘productive’. Whether it’s the non-stop data feeds of RSS and email, the numerous GTD posts, blogs, gurus, or just the fact that there are more things to do than time to do them, we often lose sight of relaxation. Relaxation IS productive, probably more so than half the things I do to ’stay on top of things’. When I am in a situation that is calming and relaxing, I have a better chance of seeing through the problems and issues I may be facing at that time. I can allow all the half-thoughts to either complete themselves or filter there way out.

And most importantly, I can watch football.

Note: this post is not addressed at any one person or group of people. Just an observation. But if you’re taking it personally, well, then….

Well, is it?

We all know that social media is great. It brings people together and helps businesses (and individuals) market themselves with extremely low barriers to entry. But is it making us dumb?

I’ve noticed a trend lately of folks either on twitter or other channels asking questions. No big deal. But these questions aren’t detailed or complex. No, they are ones that either could be solved with a 10 second Google search or looking at the settings page of whatever the program is. So why spend the time to ask a random group of people and wait for the answer?

I’ve always prided myself on having some pretty good critical thinking and problem solving skills. My parents told me it was important, that I needed to be able to solve whatever problems were thrown my way. It has translated well into my work, both corporate and freelance. That ability has enamored me to employers and co-workers when my somewhat surly attitude otherwise wouldn’t. Basically, I’m the ‘fix it’ person when it otherwise fails.

So why the crowdsourcing hate? What’s the difference between asking twitter and asking the person next to you in class? Simple: you don’t learn. Having the answers given to you at any sign of confusion does absolutely nothing to solve the problem. It’s easy to pass it off as something you ‘don’t need to know’, but the skills are just the same. Either you can figure things out or you can’t. Which kind of person do you want to be?

There are a lot of reasons why I work for a large company, as opposed to a start up or myself. And it isn’t because I enjoy falling in line with the company “vision”, or enjoy dealing with people I otherwise wouldn’t associate with. The main reason is this: Stability. Recently I got a flu shot provided by my employer, and it made me sick. Or, at least lowered my immune system to allow something else to make me sick. Either way, I’m still feeling somewhat crap-tastic. And I haven’t gone to the doctor, since I know what’s wrong. But I could if I wanted to, since I have insurance. It’s that little card glistening in my wallet telling me everything is going to be ok. Here’s a rundown of how it has single-handedly saved me from bankruptcy (and possibly alcoholism):