by Marty Coleman | Mar 20, 2012 | Perfectionism - 2012, Winston Churchill |
You know what would be perfect? If I did a series on Perfectionism.
First, a disclaimer. I am not a perfectionist nor do I play one on TV.
A regular reader and commenter on my blog, Agnes, said I should do a series on perfectionism. it was perfect timing for her to say so because I had just finished giving a presentation at the 2nd annual Social Media Tulsa Conference on ‘The Six Stop Signs on Creativity Road’ and one of the stop signs is about perfectionism. As I gave the presentation I wished I had more time to spend on that topic. Now I do.
Let’s start Perfectionism week out with 2 questions to set the stage and get our definitions out there.
What is your definition of perfect?
What, within humankind’s thought and creation, can be, or is, perfect?
I will give my answers in the comments after a while.
___________________________________
Drawing by Marty Coleman, who thinks Oreos are perfect.
Quote by Winston Churchill, who liked a good cigar.
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by Marty Coleman | Mar 19, 2012 | Raymond Chandler, Writing Lessons - 2011/12 |
Here is another in my ongoing series of Writing Lessons. I think I will go to 10 and then the series will be complete. Any good lessons you can think of that I should consider for the final 2?
What does a man coming through a door with a gun do for a story?
It causes anticipation. If you are in doubt about the direction of your story it is likely due to you yourself having lost that anticipation of what is going to happen. So, gun or not, door or not, make something that will cause you feel anticipation about the future of the story and you can guarantee your readers will feel it too.
It causes mortal fear. If you are in doubt about issues you are really dealing with in your story add in the fear of death and it will clarify your thinking on your reasons for writing the story. It will also clarify the course of the story for the reader.
It causes anger. Someone is about to violate one of the prime tenets of civilization, respecting other people’s right to their life. What is causing this person to reach that point in life? Or what is causing the person to protect others from that threat?
It causes humor. Nothing is more absurd than seeing a man or woman out of their comfort zone. Put the gun in the hand of a pageant queen or a elitist intellectual who has never seen a gun before and it could get pretty funny.
It obviously doesn’t have to be a man with a gun. But when it doubt, think about what might reignite anticipation, fear, anger or humor in yourself and the reader and you will be well on your way to clarifying your doubting thoughts.
_______________________________________________
Drawing and commentary by Marty Coleman, who last fired a gun while skeet shooting as a teenager.
Quote by Raymond Chandler, 1888 – 1959, American Novelist and Screenwriter
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by Marty Coleman | Mar 16, 2012 | Networking - 2011 |
While I am attending and speaking at Social Media Tulsa I thought I would post selections from my ‘Networking’ series that I drew in 2011.
Ok, so I am speaking at the 2012 Social Media Tulsa Conference today. I am not too worried about the information I let out while I am there. I don’t drink so it’s not likely I will get drunk and say something stupid. Then again, I can say stupid things while totally sober. But I do have information to give, that is why I am speaking there. And I don’t want all of that information to get out beforehand, at least not in it’s complete form, until I am ready to present it. Some is good, but all would diminish my presentation and I don’t want that.
But for me to have a successful trip it will come down to editing my information. Not just my presentation information, but ALL my information. Is what I am talking about while I am at SMTulsa going to be focused or is it going to be just a big hot mess of whatever. Am I going to be on plan, on target while I am there, trying to learn and help others learn or am I going to be distracted in both my commmunication and in who and what I pay attention to? I don’t mean I will not allow serendipity and casual conversation, of course I will. but I don’t want to spend an hour talking about some digital tool I have no intention or ability to use just because they are giving away something shiny. I don’t want to forget why I am there and what my goals are.
I don’t want to be pissing into the wind.
Drawing and commentary by Marty Coleman of The Napkin Dad Daily
Quote by Keith Henson, 1942-not dead yet, American electrical Engineer and founder of the L5 Society – promoting of space colonization.
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by Marty Coleman | Mar 15, 2012 | Networking - 2011 |
I am off to the Social Media Tulsa Conference today and tomorrow. I drew this series originally right before going to Blog World in LA in 2011. They fit perfectly once again as I network here in Oklahoma.
I am not a blogging superstar. I am a blogger, and I do have plenty who read and follow the NDD but I am not a superstar in the national blogging community. But I am going to be at Social Media Tulsa and in Tulsa I get a fair amount of publicity for myself. Some people will know who I am and I won’t know who they are. But there are some bigger names who will be there whom I follow on twitter and Facebook, read their blog and generally think are pretty awesome. I will introduce myself to them and if I am lucky they might have noticed I like a lot of their photos or tend to say interesting things in their comment section. It’s just as likely they won’t know who I am at all.
In the world of networking it’s critical to realize that networking goes on about you even when you aren’t there. Do you say dopey or belligerent things on people’s blogs? Do you force transparent personal advertising on people? Do you have an agenda for every conversation, every interaction? Then guess what? People may indeed know you by knowing of you. And what they know, well before they meet you in person, will not be favorable.
If you want to have people know and care you in the networking world you have to care about knowing them, not just having them know you.
Drawing (originally posted Nov. 2012) and commentary by Marty Coleman
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by Marty Coleman | Mar 14, 2012 | Networking - 2011 |
I drew the napkins I am going to post over the next few days back in October when I spoke at Blog World in Los Angeles. I thought they would be appropriate to post again for the people attending Social Media Tulsa this week, where I am speaking.
It’s such a well understood idea that it is a cliche: You must cultivate relationships in networking to get ahead. I agree with it, as far as it goes. The problem is it doesn’t go far enough. It is not enough to collect contacts like so many vegetables at harvest time. For me to feel and be successful at networking I want to transform my private garden into a community teaching garden.
I have many areas where I need the expertise of other gardeners in the Social Media world. Wordpress, twitter, publishing, database development, monetizing, you name it, I need help with it. But I also have some expertise as well; art, design, writing, content creation, If I want my fellow gardeners to help me in my areas of need then I need to be willing to help them in theirs.
But wait, isn’t that what I am doing by speaking at these conferences? Yes, it is what I am doing and I am very hopeful my session, Six Stop Signs on Creativity Road (Friday 2:15 pm) will be of great benefit to many. But my session is going to last an hour. With people talking to me after (if I am lucky), maybe another 45 minutes. The Social Media Tulsa conference lasts 2 days. Am I going to single-mindedly pursue harvesting from other people’s garden during the other 46 hours or am I going to set in my mind that I am in a community garden where I will look for opportunities to plant encouragement, motivation, inspiration, knowledge and friendship in at least equal portion to what I harvest for myself?
I like a community garden.
Drawing and commentary by Marty Coleman, The Napkin Dad
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by Marty Coleman | Mar 11, 2012 | Andy Goldsworthy, Art, Artists I Love |
We are getting into contemporary artists now and we also are moving away from painting and drawing. Here is one of the artists that most inspire me and keep me looking for joy and wonder in the world, Andy Goldsworthy.
Andy Goldsworthy – Dandelions and Hole
Goldsworthy is a British artist who works exclusively with nature and natural elements. He explores his environment and takes from it, creating all his pieces using only what the environment provides. That includes the binding elements that keep the pieces together. Usually those binding elements consist of stems, ice, grass, or just gravity.
Andy Goldsworthy – Boulder Covered in Green and Yellow leaves
Here is what it’s all about for me: One of my favorite joys in the world is turning the corner in life and discovering the unexpected before me. It might be a woman with a cool hat, it might be a funny looking stick on the ground, it doesn’t really matter. I just love the joy I feel at that moment. Can you imagine taking a walk in the forest and seeing this at the edge of a creek without knowing it was there? Not knowing how it could exist? Goldsworthy takes me to that place artistically more than any other artist. His pieces can be happened upon by unsuspecting folk. It’s the most elemental of artmaking and I love that.
Andy Goldsworthy – Gold Banded Tree
Andy Goldsworthy – Stone Circle Gray
Goldsworthy – Rocks and Sticks
Andy Goldsworthy – Green to Yellow Leaves
Andy Goldsworthy – Stone and Tree
Andy Goldsworthy – Winding Wall in Winter
Andy Goldsworthy – Pink Wall
His output is extraordinary. I have only seen one of his pieces in person and that was with my daughter Rebekah at the National Museum of Art in Washington D.C.
Andy Goldsworthy – Roof
His work is ephemeral in that none of it is built to last. The pieces either float away, melt, disintegrate, fall down or otherwise go away. His museum installations aren’t permanent either. If you would like to see more of his work the best way is to get his books, he has published many. I have the book called ‘Stone’ and it’s beautiful. He has a movie you can find online or on Netflix called ‘Rivers and Tides’ that is well worth watching.
_____________________
Fall/Winter 2016
Winter/Spring 2015
Summer 2014
Winter 2012/2013
Winter 2011/2012
_______________________
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by Marty Coleman | Mar 9, 2012 | History Lessons - 2012, Leonard Louis Levinson |
Alas, we have reached the end of history.
What sort of fruit would the ‘Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil’ bear today?
© 2025 Marty Coleman, who used to think the little floaty things I got in my eye as a kid were atoms that I could see.
Quote by Leonard Louis Levinson who, it seems, wrote quotes.
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by Marty Coleman | Mar 8, 2012 | Frederich Nietzsche, History Lessons - 2012 |
1, 2, and 3 are past, so that makes this day #4 of History Lesson Week.
INFURIATIONS
This sentiment, ‘every past is worth condemning’, probably infuriates you as it did me when I first read it. I am often the one in arguments about history to defend the past era and the decisions made then. I don’t mean I approve of them, obviously I would not make many of the same decisions now. But that’s the point; I am in the present, not the past. Just as you have to take into consideration the age and mental capacity of your child when you react to what they say and do, you must do the same for the people of the past. They knew what they knew and as a result they said and did thing based on that knowledge, not based on our knowledge. So, I typically am against condemning the past, even if we now can say we don’t approve of the actions they took.
But after reading this simple sentence over a number of times I am starting to see the value in it. By condemning the past and how they acted we are saying that we have learned, we have grown, we have gone beyond their understanding. That of course can be a two-edged sword. Not all knowledge from the past is wrong and often we find ourselves as a society moving back to past practices because we have found that our ‘progress’ really wasn’t so progressive. But plenty of knowledge from that past is worth condemning.
RATIONALIZATIONS
We don’t need to reexamine if slavery is something we should bring back. It has been condemned as wrong and we will not return to it. We don’t need to investigate if the subjugation of women is something we want to reinstitute. We know they are equal to the male of the species in every way and we are not going to return to the days of them being condemned to a lesser life. We condemn that attitude and any and all rationalizations, however valid they may have seemed at some point in the past. We know now they are not valid and we will not let them be used again.
THE PAST AS PRESENT
The last point about women brings us to a dilemma. The past isn’t always in the past. We have subjugation of women going on all over the globe as I write this today. They are not allowed to vote, to drive, to own property, to have their own money, to participate as an equal member of society. The societies that are perpetrating this are still using the same arguments we once used not so long ago (don’t forget, less than 100 years ago women did not have the right to vote in the USA).
We can also find it with us today in the US and other supposedly enlightened western countries. You don’t have to go much farther than the headlines of the last week over Rush Limbaugh’s disgusting statements about one woman in particular (and be inference virtually all women in the US) to know we still have a long way to go to move past some of those same rationalizations we thought we had left behind.
© 2025 Marty Coleman \ napkindad.com
Quote by Friedrich Nietzsche, 1844-1900, German philosopher
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by Marty Coleman | Mar 7, 2012 | Donald Creighton, History Lessons - 2012 |
Don’t get distracted, not while it’s only day #3 of History Lesson Week!
I sometimes get distracted easily. I work at home so it might be like today where I heard a bang up in the attic. Investigating I found that a christmas box had compressed a box below it, sliding down enough for a box on top of it to fall off. Nothing harmed and I was thankful it wasn’t a raccoon or alien, or alien raccoon.
But while I was up there rearranging it I noticed another box in a funny place so I moved it. I also brought up some empty boxes and made room for them, then I came down into the kitchen and wanted coffee and realized my milk is almost gone which I was going to replace with a new carton yesterday but was distracted on my way home from running by the report on the radio which I switched to during a commercial that I was going to switch back to the other station but forgot and while in the kitchen I noticed the dogs want to go out and while letting them out I realized the wind had blown stuff around so I picked that stuff up and then I realized I needed to get the mail and put the trash out for pick up and then I wanted a snack and then I remembered to get back to my office and start writing this a half an hour later but when I got back I had an image in a directory showing and I remembered I needed to edit it which I did and while I did that I realized I forgot my coffee in the kitchen and then decided to change shoes and then I wrote this.
Luckily the merging of my character and circumstances didn’t lead to a nuclear holocaust or falling down a sewer pipe. But it could in the future so I really need to get a grip on this attention span thing, which I will right after I go get milk…
© 2025 Marty Coleman, who just saw a pretty bird in the back yard.
Quote by Donald Creigh….oh wait, TWO pretty birds!
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by Marty Coleman | Mar 6, 2012 | History Lessons - 2012, Mark Twain |
Historically speaking, it’s day #2 of History Lesson Week at the NDD.
Why are histories about the same era written again and again? Gibbon’s wrote a multi-volume history of the Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire. Why isn’t that enough, why more books on the same topic? Why so many books about Lincoln, World War II, the American revolution, China, technology, wars? Why is there such a long history of histories? Because our prejudices are fluid over the generations and our histories will always be updated to fit our prejudices.
What are our historical and present day prejudices? Just ask yourself what you believe in and that will tell you. The belief might blind you to the truth, as is the case in certain branches of Islam or Christianity where they do whatever they can to keep women down. They go so far as to create and then perpetuate gargantuan lies under the guise of history to validate and support their prejudices against women being equal. They are driven by fear and they call it ‘truth’.
I read a synopsis of Hegel’s idea of ‘the Dialectic’ yesterday. No, I don’t really understand it, and no I haven’t ever read his actual work. (Ask my daughter Rebekah if you want to talk to someone who has actually read it and understood it). I read it in a book called ‘Eureka! – What Archimedes Really Meant and 80 Other Key Ideas Explained.’ It essentially is this: Thesis, Antithesis and Synthesis. We start with an idea, the opposite of the idea comes up to challenge it and eventually the two ideas combine to some degree to create a synthesis, a new idea. That idea/thesis in turn is the starting point for a new antithesis to challenge it and on it goes.
That is how we can see our fluid history. A way of looking at a series of events is put forth, let’s say about the American Civil War. Someone writes a book saying it was fought over slavery. Then someone else challenges that it was about slavery and writes that it was instead about state’s rights. A third person writes another book that says it was about both. That leads to yet another book that says it was about neither but instead was about cotton. And on and on it goes. The positive side to the idea of the dialectic is that it should lead to ever increasing knowledge and understanding. In practice, while I do believe we make some progress in society and life, I also believe that fear and vested interests keep society and individuals from moving forward towards a better life for all.
© 2025 Marty Coleman, who would always choose ‘history’ on Jeopardy!
Quote by Mark Twain, who was born 4 years after Hegel died.
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